Port of Tallinn passenger numbers hit record high for 10th consecutive year

In 2017 the record breaking number of 10.56 million passengers passed through the harbours of Port of Tallinn increasing last year’s result by 4 percent. The number of cruise passengers and passengers of the Stockholm line also hit a record.

According to Port of Tallinn’s CCO Margus Vihman the passenger number of the company has given reasons to celebrate several years, as 2017 was a record breaking year already 10th year in a row. "Port of Tallinn exceeded the one million passengers margin in 1992, the amount of five million passengers was achieved for the first time in 1998, the following nine years the number fluctuated between five to seven million and starting from 2008 the passenger number has hit record high every following year. It’s good to see such results and we will continue our work to increase the passenger number in the future even more," described Vihman.

Vihman added that in 2017 the number of cruise passengers visiting Tallinn also hit a record: "Cruise vessels called Tallinn 311 times and brought 564,280 cruise tourists to Estonia’s capital. Cruise ships called Saaremaa Harbour 5 times with 1,513 passengers on board. Compared to 2016, the annual cruise passenger number increased by 19.2 percent."

The most popular shipping line in 2017 continued to be Tallinn-Helsinki with 8.83 million annual passengers, increasing by 3.7 percent compared to the year before. 83 percent of all Port of Tallinn’s passengers sailed on the Helsinki line.

The passenger number of the Tallinn-Stockholm line increased by 4.8 percent exceeding for the first time the one million milestone with 1,030,029 annual passengers. Ten percent of all the passengers sailed on the Stockholm line and the Saint Petersburg line included one percent of all the passengers, which was 83,400 people.

With 1,997,312 passengers the most popular vessel in 2017 was Tallink’s new Megastar operating on the Tallinn-Helsinki route, it was followed by Viking Line’s Viking XPRS operating on the Tallinn-Helsinki route with 1,751,820 passengers serviced in 2017. The third most popular vessel was Tallink’s Star, which also operates on the Tallinn-Helsinki route and carried altogether 1,668,454 passengers last year.

Tallink’s share of the annual passenger numbers was 57 percent, followed by Viking Line with 22 percent, Eckerö Line with 14 percent and Moby SPL with one percent.

In 2017, passenger vessels called Port of Tallinn’s harbours in total of 6,039 times.