137,338 cruise passengers visit Malta in Q2 of 2022 as industry bounces back from Covid-19

The National Statistics Office has published figures showing that 137,338 cruise passengers visited Malta in the second quarter of 2022, an encouraging recovery for an industry which was brought to an absolute standstill due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

48.8% of these passengers were from the EU.

German passengers made up the largest share of EU nationals coming to Malta on cruise liners (17.7%), with Italian passengers making up the second highest share of this demographic (13.1%).

For the first two quarters of 2022 as a whole, the total number of cruise passengers stood at 162,538. Of these, 53.5% came from the EU.

There were 102 cruise liner calls in Malta during Q2, which is an increase of 83 cruise liners from the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Over the past 6 months, there have been 125 cruise liners calling in Malta.

On average every vessel that entered Malta, in Q2, carried 1,246 passengers, which is 113 more than the previous year. During the first two quarters, there was an average of 1,300 passengers per vessel.

There were also 70,295 passengers who were not from the EU. Out of these 65.2% came from the UK and 22.1% came from the US.

Moreover, the majority of passengers were female which amounted to 86,759 (53.4%) passengers for the first two quarters.

The most common age bracket for passengers was between 60 and 79 years totalling 56,346 for the first two quarters. This was followed by those aged between 40 and 59 years, who reached 56,105.