More passengers per ship and in Swedish ports during the second quarter of 2023

In the second quarter of 2023, the total number of passengers in Swedish ports was 7.0 million, a slight increase from 6.9 million passengers in the same quarter of 2022. Passenger traffic to and from the Danish ports contributed the most to the total increase. Despite more passengers in the ports in foreign traffic, the number of ship calls has continued to decrease compared to the same quarter in 2022. This shows new preliminary official statistics from Trafikanalys.

- Ferry traffic to and from foreign ports has recovered some of the loss of passengers that we saw at the beginning of the pandemic. However, travel is still around 20 percent below pre-pandemic levels. The number of ship calls decreases slightly compared to the same quarter in 2022, which indicates that the ships take slightly more passengers on average, says Henrik Petterson, statistician at Trafikanalys.

The number of passengers in international traffic has increased, from 5.8 million to 6.0 million passengers compared to the same quarter last year. Traffic to and from the Danish ports contributed to almost half of the increase with nearly 100,000 more travellers.

Despite more passengers in the ports in foreign traffic, the number of ship calls has continued to decrease, this means that the number of passengers per ship has increased on average compared to Q2 2022. The number of arriving ship calls decreased from 12,384 to 11,382.

Number of passengers in domestic traffic, i.e. mainly traffic to and from Gotland, decreased by 4 percent, from 1,006,000 passengers to 964,000 passengers in the ports.

The total quantity of goods unloaded and loaded in Swedish ports continued to decrease, from 44.0 to 41.5 million tonnes. It is the lowest handling of goods over the quay since the weak third quarter of 2020.

In the Swedish ports, there is still more goods, measured by weight, that arrive from a foreign port for import to Sweden than what departs from Sweden to a foreign port for export. Unloaded (arriving) goods from foreign ports fell by 3 percent to 20.1 million tons, while the amount of loaded (departing) goods to foreign ports fell by 6 percent, from 16.7 million to just over 15.7 million tons. Unloaded domestic goods decreased by 14 percent, from 3.4 million tons of goods to 2.9 million tons.

The statistics include all Swedish ports with ships with a gross tonnage of at least 20, which call in commercial traffic; to load/unload goods or drop off/pick up passengers. Domestic goods and passengers are counted twice in reported statistics, this to measure the total activity in the ports. Cruise ship passengers included.

Sep 07 2023