Recovery Dynamics of Passenger, Cruise and Vehicle Traffic in the Port of Split, 2005–2025: A Statistical Analysis

Abstract

The Port of Split handles more passengers than any other Croatian port, and its published traffic statistics offer a compact case for applying elementary statistical methods to a real transport problem. This study analyses twenty-one years of annual data, from 2005 to 2025, covering total passengers, cruise passengers and accompanied vehicles, and asks whether the three segments recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic at the same pace. Five methods are applied, each chosen so that its result can be checked by hand: descriptive statistics, year-on-year and compound annual growth rates, ordinary least-squares trend regression, Pearson correlation, and the ratio of passengers to vehicles. A linear trend fitted to the fifteen pre-pandemic years is projected forward to 2025, which turns the question of whether traffic has recovered into a measurable comparison against the path it was on beforehand. Figures published by the Split Port Authority form the primary source. Cruise passenger counts for 2005 to 2008 and annual cruise-call totals were provided by the Port Authority on request. Passenger data from the Croatian Bureau of Statistics serve as an independent cross-check and supply a domestic and international breakdown, and Split Airport figures give context on air arrivals. Passenger traffic fell by more than half in 2020 and returned to within four per cent of its pre-pandemic trend by 2023. Vehicle traffic crossed its own trend line in 2021 and finished 2025 twenty-six per cent above it, while the ratio of passengers to vehicles, steady between 6.7 and 7.0 across 2014 to 2019, has settled near 5.8 and shows no sign of returning. A separate result concerns the cruise segment: the number of calls has shown no trend since 2008, yet the average number of cruise passengers recorded per call rose from 475 to 1,273, so growth in cruise tourism at this port has come from what each call brings rather than from more calls arriving. Passenger volumes have therefore recovered while the composition of that traffic has not, and the paper examines why fewer people now travel per vehicle, including the possibility that fully occupied tourist coaches have become less common and that a growing share of air arrivals continues onward by rental vehicle.