Where cruise passengers go

A few hours, many kilometres, little distance

Cities change; the shape of the visit much less so. In Barcelona the median GPS-recorded visit lasts 297.5 minutes; net of the transfer to and from the terminal, just over four hours remain in the city.^[1] In Visby cruise visitors stay on average about 4.8 hours, in Palermo about 3 hours 58 minutes, in Copenhagen about four hours.^[2][3][6]

In that time people walk a lot but go only a short way. In Visby each visitor covers about 10.7 km on average without going beyond about 2.4 km from the port, mostly within the town walls.^[2] In Palermo the total distance covered averages 13.9 km, but the maximum distance from the starting point averages about 2 km.^[3] In Copenhagen the average route measures about 12 km, yet three in four passengers stay within about 3 km of the port.^[6] In Barcelona the farthest point reached on foot lies a median of about 4.7 km from the terminal.^[1]

The drop-off point steers the visit

In Barcelona walking fills about half of the visit, and the terminal shuttle, used by 71.9% of participants, makes its end stop at the top of La Rambla the shared starting point.^[1] Walking profiles depend mainly on what people do during the visit, such as the transport they use, rather than on personal traits.^[1] In Copenhagen, too, nearly nine in ten respondents (about 87%) explore the city on their own.^[6]

In Visby the group with the shortest visit (3.2 hours on average) enters town later and does not reach the northern part of the walled town; the tracks suggest that those who take a bus into the historic core spend more time in the less-visited northern areas.^[2] The thesis also notes that ships usually arrive between 7 and 9 am, while many shops open at 10.^[2]

When the cruise ends

At turnaround ports the picture changes with where passengers come from. In Sydney, across 75 tracks followed for up to 28 days, the farthest straight-line point reached averages about 143 km for Australians from elsewhere, against about 27 km for international passengers and 32 km for residents.^[4] Every international passenger in the sample spends time in the centre and harbour-side areas, and their tracks are the shortest (median 21 hours), as many end at the airport.^[4]

Measuring has a cost

Raw data need cleaning: in the open Palermo dataset, on average 15% of points per track are spatial outliers and 15% temporal ones.^[3] In Visby, of the 408 tracks collected, 267 were analysed.^[2]

Participation also fades over time: in the Tasmania project, which followed 472 independent tourists (not cruise passengers) for 4–14 days, 90.5% of participants answered the initial survey but only 28.2% the final one.^[5] The authors credit the project's success mainly to the study design, from recruitment to incentives, rather than to technology alone.^[5]