CRUISE TOURISM. DESTINATIONS, EVOLUTIONS AND ECONOMIC IMPACT

Abstract

If, at the end of the last century, cruising was considered a form of luxury tourism, with the development of the specific infrastructure and the reduction of tariffs, it became, especially in the last decades, a form of tourism accessible to the general public. Unfortunately, as in the case of other forms of cough, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic practically led to its cancellation. Considering that the currently available data are insufficient for an analysis of the evolution of cruise tourism in the post-pandemic period, the paper analyzes its evolution, by groups of destinations worldwide, only in the period 1996-2019. The analysis highlights the characteristics of the recorded developments, the appearance and disappearance of some destinations, as well as the evolution of the shares of cruise tourism in the total number of tourist arrivals, with evaluations of the impact on the regional developments of the destinations.