2017 archived information

2017 Annual Traffic Statistics

Overall passengers and vehicles

  • A total of 615,456 passengers used the Isle of Man harbours during 2017, 17,438, or 2.9% more than in 2016
  • Seven of the twelve months experienced increases, but the increase in April was a substantial 20,000 passengers
  • Q2 and Q4, saw increases, with Q2 producing a remarkable 29,000, 15% passenger increase
  • Q1 and Q3 declined compared with 2016, with Q1 8,100 passengers, or 13.8%, down
  • Almost 584,000 passengers passing through the IOM harbours travelled on scheduled ferry sailings, 94.9% of the total, this traffic increasing by 3.4%
  • Non-scheduled crews and passengers declined by 5.1% with 31,461 using the IOM harbours
  • Scheduled service passenger vehicles saw a solid increase in 2017 of 4.9%

Scheduled passengers and vehicles

  • Scheduled passengers’ throughput in 2017 was up by over 19,000. April saw the largest scheduled passenger increase of 18,500, but this followed a sharp decrease in April 2016
  • Liverpool traffic increased by 17,751 with Heysham falling by 2,758, giving Liverpool a lead over Heysham of almost 21,700 passengers, with 49% of the scheduled market
  • Passengers on Dublin were up by 23% over 2016 at 8,877
  • The Belfast route was 11.6% up, with almost 23,900 passengers
  • 186,139 scheduled passengers’ vehicles were transported to and from the Island, a 4.9% increase over 2016. The big increase was again in April with more 6,160 vehicles carried

Non-Scheduled passengers and crew

  • Commercial non-scheduled passengers were down in 2016 by 6.5% to 26,700.  Marina and Non-marina numbers increased by 3.2 to 4,779
  • Cruise ship traffic declined with over 2,100 fewer visitors. The principle cause of this was the early season cancellation of the MV Balmoral sailings following a certification issue
  • Fishing crews were down by 27%. The Karina saw a slight decrease of 3% with 6,640 passengers taking trips on the vessel

Crew and passengers from all other categories of non-scheduled commercial activity saw increases, the most notable being for support vessels, up by almost 1,000 or 130%.