Harbour Traffic Information

Isle of Man Monthly Harbours’ Traffic Summary 

March 2018

Below is a summary of the Isle of Man passenger traffic statistics for the Island’s Harbours for March 2018. With Easter weekend spanning the end of March and the beginning of April, March 2018 saw a substantial increase of 6,000 passengers or 28% over March 2017

Overall passengers

• A total of 27,413 passengers used the Isle of Man Harbours in March 2018, up by 5,996 or 28.0%.  Much of this increase was due to the surge in traffic in the lead-up to Easter but was tempered slightly by Storm Emma, which affected sailings in early March
• It should be noted that March 2017 saw a 29% decrease over 2016, with an April Easter in 2017, but a 28% increase remains a good result.
• Scheduled passenger traffic fueled the increase, but non-scheduled was also slightly up
• As a result, Q1 of 2018 saw a very solid 14.6% increase in total harbours’ traffic

Scheduled passengers and vehicles

• Overall, scheduled service passengers were up by 5,975 passengers with just under 26,900 passing through the Port of Douglas
• The Liverpool routes saw a 115% increase, from some 4,500 to over 9,800 passengers
• Whilst Heysham was responsible for 60% of the traffic, the route suffered a slight decrease of 1.6% to just over 16,000 passengers.
• By coincidence, the pre-Easter sailings to Belfast and Dublin each carried 492 passengers
• Scheduled passengers’ vehicles saw an increase of around 1,000 vehicles or 13.3%, with 8,342 vehicles arriving, and departing from the Island

Non-Scheduled passengers

• Non-scheduled traffic was slightly up by 21 passengers or 4.3% to 509 passengers and crew
• Fishing crews were significantly fewer at 264 compared with 400 last March, down by 34%

Support vessels again generated a huge percentage increase in crews – from four crews in March 2017 to 227 in March this year.