August was a good month for the cruise industry, with a 30 per cent rise in the number of passengers passing through Malta over the same month last year.

A total of 68,722 cruise liner passengers came to the island, according to figures released by the National Statistics Office.

The rise helped push up the January-August figure, with Malta receiving 348,744 cruise passengers during the period compared with 308,663 in 2010 and 248,870 in 2009.

The vast majority of August’s passengers, 52,189, were in transit.

There was a 48.9 per cent increase in passengers from EU member states when compared to last year.

This made up for a significant decline in the non-EU market, with a drop of 39.5 per cent. Much of this decrease can be attributed to a drop in the American market, although when one takes the January-August period into account, the number of non-EU cruise passengers increased by 23.2 per cent.

Most of last month’s passengers, 23,474, came from Germany and 18,495 came from Italy.

There were 30 cruise liner calls last month and 173 since January – 16 more than the corresponding period in 2010. Each cruise liner since January carried an average of 2,016 passengers, which represented a slight increase over the 2010 and 2009 numbers.