The port of call and word of mouth in the Canaries

The question

Whether, and how much, cruise passengers' satisfaction with port-of-call services (infrastructure, safety, organisation, cleanliness, access to town, information on arrival), and their comparison with other ports, influence the intention to recommend a cruise to the Canary Islands and to return to the island.

The method

Face-to-face surveys commissioned by the two Canary Islands port authorities over six cruise seasons between 2001-02 and 2014-15, with 9,364 valid questionnaires (2,312 in the subsample of repeat cruise passengers comparing with other ports). Multilevel mixed-effects ordered logit models, with passengers nested within 68 cruises, and average marginal effects.

What the study finds

4.68 out of 5willingness to recommend the cruiseThe baseline is already high: on a 1-to-5 scale, surveyed cruise passengers score their willingness to recommend the cruise at 4.68 on average and their intention to return to the island at 4.41.

4.26 out of 5average score for port hygiene and cleanlinessOf the six port features rated, hygiene and cleanliness receive the best average score (4.26 out of 5).

+11 pct ptslikelihood of recommending: La Gomera port-town linkBetter ratings for port services and infrastructure, port organisation and information on arrival are associated with a higher likelihood of recommending the cruise. In the port-by-port models, the largest effect concerns the port-to-town connection in La Gomera: about 11 percentage points more probability of 'strongly agreeing'.

+6.3 pct ptslikelihood of recommending among those preferring Canary portsIn the subgroup of passengers with previous cruise experience, those who rate the Canary ports better than ports elsewhere in the world are about 6.3 percentage points more likely to fully recommend the cruise (3.15 points when the comparison is with the rest of Europe).

For the intention to come back to the island, the rating of port organisation matters most (especially in La Gomera and Lanzarote); better ratings for safety, hygiene and access to town do not appear to raise it, except access in Lanzarote in one of the models.
In the model for passengers with prior cruise experience, having already visited the Canaries, as well as coming from Italy, raises the probability of being fully intent on returning by more than 10 percentage points.

Why it matters for ports and cities

The port of call is the first encounter with the destination: according to the study, how passengers judge it is linked to word-of-mouth and to the chance they come back, including as conventional tourists. Disembarkation organisation, arrival information and the link to the town centre are areas where ports and cities can act directly.

Limitations

Canary Islands ports only and pre-COVID data (up to 2014-15), so passenger profiles and infrastructure (e.g. Tenerife's new terminal in 2016) may have changed; the variables are stated intentions, not observed behaviour.

Full reference and source

Baños-Pino, J.F., Tovar, B. (2025). Cruise passengers’ perception of port attributes and their influence on revisiting and recommending. Evidence from the Canary Islands. Research in Transportation Business & Management, vol. 60, 101386 (Elsevier).

Read the original study ↗

Summary written by the ODYBOAT Observatory in our own words. Tables and figures belong to the authors.