There were 44,780 cruise passengers in April, 20.3 per cent less than in the same month last year.

The National Statistics Office said that 97.2 per cent of the passengers were in transit, while the remaining passengers either embarked from or landed in Malta.

Most passengers – 15,840, fell within the 60-79 age group.

Female passengers outnumbered males and amounted to 23,473, or 52.4 per cent of the total.

Cruise passengers from EU countries stood at 32,142. The majority of EU passengers were Italian (8,627) or French (6,953). The Spanish and British markets registered increases of 40 and 15.8 per cent, respectively over the corresponding month last year, while the Italian market dropped by 47.7 per cent.

On the other hand, American passengers dominated the non-EU market at 4,562.

Almost all non-EU countries registered minor drops in April, with the exception of Canada which increased by 24.1 per cent.

Total cruise passengers between January and April amounted to 68,413, a drop of 33 per cent over the previous year.

Of these, 44,651 were from EU countries. The number of cruise passengers from most European markets dropped except for the UK and Spain, which registered increases of 27.6 and 10.3 per cent, respectively.

Conversely, the number of passengers from non-EU countries moved up marginally and stood at 23,762.

There were 43 cruise liner calls in the first four months of the year, with an average of 1,591 passengers per vessel.

The situation may improve since some 35 cruise ships with a total capacity of about 100,000 passengers were expected to divert to Malta instead of docking in turbulent North African ports this year, according to Valletta Cruise Port.

The diversions, mainly from Tunisia, should help bring the projected passengers for this year up to 622,258 from 490,744 in 2010.