The Baltic Sea Region Ranks as the World’s Fastest-Growing Cruise Market

The Baltic has become a popular cruise destination within the last five years. This has emerged from an analysis compiled by COWI, which has researched the growth of the international cruise market. The consultants have looked at the destinations within the Baltic region and compared them with the destinations in other sought-after cruise areas.

With 399,000 passengers in 2006, Copenhagen is Baltic’s most visited destination ahead of St Petersburg and Tallinn.

The world’s largest cruise market is North America, where Caribbean cruises are the most popular, but Europe –including the Baltic Sea Region- now has a market share of 13 percent, and the share is still growing.

At the same time the number of cruise ship passengers visiting the 19 Baltic destinations that make up Cruise Baltic Project is growing faster than the number of cruise passengers in the rest of Europe.

Ranked according to the number of passengers who disembark there, the five largest Baltic destinations are: Copenhagen, Tallinn, St Petersburg, Stockholm and Helsinki.

Research published by consultants COWI has established that the 19 destinations that make up Cruise Baltic Project generate a yearly turnover approaching 443 million euros from cruise tourism. That means that each year cruise tourism creates up to 11,500 jobs.

Cruise Baltic Project is a three-year EU project which started in 2004 in order to increase the number of cruise ship passengers to the Baltic region.

The proportion of cruise ships in the Baltic Sea’s share of the global cruise ship market, and the number of passengers that return after their first visit to the region. In 2006, 2.3 million visitors were registered by the turnstiles of the 19 harbor members of the Cruise Baltic Project.