Foreign ships made 820 cruises to the Croatian Adriatic in 2008, or 30.6 per cent more than in the previous year, carrying a total of 936,400 passengers, an increase of nearly 35 per cent, according to figures from the National Bureau of Statistics.
Passengers aboard foreign cruisers spent a total of 1,567 days in Croatia last year, or two days on average, 58.3 per cent more than in 2007.
Most of the cruisers 163 sailed under the Bahamian flag, while the largest number of passengers -- 251,000 -- came aboard Italian-flagged cruisers, which made 111 trips in all.
Maltese ships performed 111 cruises, followed by 88 trips made by cruisers from Panama, 59 from Portugal and 41 from France.
Cruisers from Belgium, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Britain made about 30 trips, while those from Greece, the Marshall Islands and the Netherlands made about 20 cruises.
Last year the Croatian Adriatic was also visited by cruisers from Liberia, Finland, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Germany and Vanuatu.
(Hina)