In 2025 Italy ranks as the second country in the world for cruise traffic movement. Also in that year, passenger movements in Italian ports amount to 100 million, including ferries, cruises, and recreational boating. This emerges from the first edition of the Report on maritime tourism in Italy, produced by Risposte turismo, a research and consulting company founded and chaired by Francesco di Cesare and active for 25 years. Regarding cruises alone, with about 15 million passengers moved (boardings, disembarkations, and transits) recorded in 2025, equal to 35% of the total traffic in the Mediterranean basin (a new historical record with a 3.6% increase over 2024), Italy, the report reads, earns the second place worldwide, after the USA; Spain is third.
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Estimates made by Risposte turismo indicate further growth expected by the end of 2026, when passengers moved in Italian cruise ports should exceed 15.3 million (+3.9% over 2025) and ship calls should approach 6,000 (+4.8% over 2025).
The market is changing
The analysis also highlights some structural changes in the market: “Although still strongly concentrated along the Tyrrhenian side, particularly thanks to the results achieved in 2025 by the country’s top three cruise ports (Civitavecchia with 3.56 million, Naples with 1.85 million, and Genoa with 1.63 million), cruise traffic,” the study states, “shows the first signs of territorial and temporal redistribution. The macro-area of the islands was the fastest growing in 2025, while the shoulder season months (March – May and October) are those registering the most significant increase compared to 2024, highlighting the first effects of destagionalization processes.”
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The report also dedicates an in-depth analysis to maritime transport via ferries, hydrofoils, and catamarans, a sector that, until now, has been only partially analyzed due to the fragmentation of available sources. To overcome this limitation, Risposte turismo integrated official Assoporti data, relating to the docks of the Port System Authorities, with a mapping of over 60 ports and landings that handle passenger traffic but do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Adsp.
From this integration, according to the study, it emerges that “in 2025 at least 74.3 million passengers were moved by short and long-range transport (+2.1% over 2024): 60.5 million recorded by Assoporti,” through the Adsp, “and over 13.8 million recorded by Risposte turismo from 34 ports that, out of about 60 mapped nationally, collaborated on this first edition of the report. The data, although not exhaustive at the national level, today represents the most complete available snapshot of the sector.” And it is, in any case, “an underestimate, as some local ports still do not have complete statistical series.”
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