Over the first ten months of 2018 there a total of 644 ship cruises were registered visiting Croatia, unchanged from the same period last year, while the number of passengers aboard those ships was 976,500 - a 9.4 percent increase from the first ten months of 2017, the state statistics bureau said on Wednesday.

Although the number of passengers carried by cruisers visiting Croatian waters increased, the time they spent in the country was shorter, as they spent a total of 1,267 days moored in Croatian ports, or a 6.8 percent drop year-on-year.

The most popular port with cruise ships was the medieval town of Dubrovnik in the southern part of the coast, made famous as the location where the globally popular series Game of Thrones was filmed, which recorded 487 cruise ship visits. Dubrovnik was followed by Croatia’s second city of Split, with 224 visits, and Zadar, with 111.

In percentages, nearly 57 percent of all cruises included Dubrovnik in their itineraries, and 25 percent Split.

In total, 13 Croatian towns and cities along its coastline were visited by ships cruising around the Mediterranean, all the way from Istria in the northern Adriatic, to Dubrovnik in the extreme south.

As for flags the cruisers sailed under, the largest number had the flag of the Bahamas (167), followed by Malta (147) and Panama (108).

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