Tenerife expects 67,270 cruise passengers in October

23 cruise ships are due to call at the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in October. The port authority’s call schedule indicates a total capacity of up to 67,270 passengers. The island’s capital is therefore set to welcome the return of day-trippers from the sea.

The port statistics from «Puertos de Tenerife» indicate that arrivals are scheduled for just 15 days in Tenerife’s capital. This means that cruise tourism is concentrated on half the days in October, with several ships sometimes arriving one after the other.

The crowds in the old town and at the island’s tourist attractions are therefore not spread evenly throughout October, but tend to peak on specific dates. One of these is 10 October:

The cruise season in Tenerife begins in October

The date falls on a Saturday. On that day, up to 9,334 passengers from two ships are expected to disembark almost simultaneously. This means that Santa Cruz will see 14 per cent of the total monthly visitor numbers on a single day. The largest ship, carrying up to 6,334 passengers, will be the MSC Virtuosa.

October traditionally marks the start of the cruise season in the Canary Islands. Cruise lines head for the Canary Islands particularly in winter. European operators then shift their routes southwards. According to earlier forecasts by the port authority, the peak in ship calls is expected a month later.

In the island’s capital, cruise passengers are explicitly regarded as «high-value tourists» in terms of tourism policy, as Mayor José Manuel Bermúdez stated two years ago. The reason for this lies in the money they spend within a matter of hours in shops, restaurants and with tour operators, without taking up hotel beds.

However, the Canary Islands recently recorded fewer cruise passengers than a year earlier, with Tenerife seeing the sharpest decline among the islands. In addition to cruise passengers, most holidaymakers continue to travel to the largest of the Canary Islands by plane.