Harbour Traffic Information

Isle of Man Monthly Harbours’ Traffic Summary 

August 2018

Below is a summary of the Isle of Man passenger traffic statistics for the Island’s Harbours for August 2018. The recent declining trend continued for August with a decrease of almost 10%. In summary:

Overall passengers

• A total of 95,462 passengers used the Isle of Man Harbours in July 2018, down by 10,675 or 9.8%. Although some of this decrease was due to a fall in scheduled traffic, a huge fall in non-scheduled passengers and crew was responsible for the majority of the decline
• This meant that cumulative total harbours’ traffic since the beginning of the year is now 5.5% below the cumulative for the same period for 2017

Scheduled passengers and vehicles

• Overall, scheduled service passengers were down by 3,467 passengers or 3.5%, with 95,462 passing through the Port of Douglas.
• The Liverpool route saw a slight 1.3% decrease, to 55,517 passengers.
• Heysham, however, was 5.15 down, with passengers dropping by 1,723 to 32,075
• Belfast sailings carried also suffered a fall – 381, or 6.4% - to 5,533 passengers, whilst Dublin’s decrease was over 20%.
• By contrast, scheduled passengers’ vehicles saw a slight increase of 265 vehicles or 1%, with 27,447 vehicles arriving, and departing from the Island

Non-Scheduled passengers

• Non-scheduled traffic was substantially down by 7,208 passengers or over 72% to just 2,793 passengers and crew
• The primary cause of the decrease was the fewer visits to the island by cruise ships, which contributed to almost 5,000 of the fall. However cruise traffic so far this year is 22.5% up, indicating that visiting ships have simply been rescheduled to different months of the year
• The ceasing of the pleasure trips operated by the historic vessel, Karina, responsible for carrying almost 2,000 passengers in August 2017 also added significantly to the decline