… or so it seems. The Passenger Shipping Association, which describes itself as ‘the trade association for the UK cruise and ferry industry, representing all passenger shipping interests’ (but see * below) published some figures yesterday showing the continuing strength of the UK cruise market:
- Passengers from the UK took just over 1.7m cruises in 2012, up very slightly from the year before;
- 962,000 British passengers starting their cruises in the UK’s southern ports (Southampton, Portsmouth and Dover), an increase of 10% over the previous year
- More than half of British cruise passengers took more than one cruise in 2012, and almost 375,000 British cruise passengers took three or more cruises during the year;
- One-in-eight foreign package holidays sold in 2012 was a cruise.
Here’s a link to their website, and another to this story.
Thinking about those figures, one conclusion I draw is that if total cruises increased fractionally, and within that the number of ex-UK port cruises increased by 10%, then the number of fly-cruises must have dropped significantly. Hmm….
* I’m not sure how a trade association can represent their members’ customers’ interests….