For years, Barcelona has been engaged in a reflection to rethink its tourism model, including the role of cruises and their presence in the city. The municipal strategy has involved promoting the transfer of cruise terminals to docks further away from the city and taxing the activity, including that of visitors who disembark in the Catalan capital and re-board the cruise ship a few hours later.
With this tax, added to the tourist tax for staying in the city, cruise passengers who passed through Barcelona in 2023 left 12.8 million euros in public coffers. Their contribution represented 9.7% of the total collected by the city with these taxes, which amounted to a total of 135 million euros. Of these, the City Council managed more than 100, while the rest corresponded to the Generalitat, according to a study by the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) developed at the request of the Cruise Lines International Association (Clia).
Looking ahead to 2024, which is shaping up to be a record year for cruises in Barcelona, it is estimated that the total revenue obtained from cruise passenger movements will rise to 14.5 million euros, taking into account both ships that use Barcelona as a base and those that have it as a stopover, as detailed by the Professor of Applied Economics at the Universitat de Barcelona Jordi Suriñach, along with the director of Clia in Spain, Alfredo Serrano.
The also director of the AQR-Lab Applied Economics Laboratory at the UB has highlighted that, proportionally, cruise passengers generate more for the city than other visitors in terms of taxes. With data from 2019, cruise passengers represented 4.1% of the city's visitors, while their contribution with the tax represented 7.5% of what was collected.
And the number of cruise passengers has not stopped growing in recent years, from 1.9 million who passed through Barcelona in 2012 to 2.6 million in 2023, according to UB data. In fact, the city has already far exceeded the pre-pandemic figure, of 2.2 million cruise passengers in 2019, and expects to close 2024 with record highs. Within this growth, the increase in cruises that use Barcelona as a home port stands out: if in 2012 they represented 40% of the total, now they stand at 53%.
Cruise passengers traveling on this type of cruise, which start and end in the city, generate higher spending than transit cruise passengers, as they usually sleep in their accommodations. "This is the ideal visitor profile, as they also have an interest in culture and shopping," Suriñach highlighted. Precisely for this reason, the Barcelona City Council prioritizes attracting cruises that use the city as a base, over transit ones.
Currently, cruise passengers who make a stopover in the city pay between six and seven euros per person per day, depending on whether the cruise stay is longer than 12 hours or not. For their part, homeport cruise passengers who stay overnight in the city contribute with a tourist tax ranging between five euros and 7.5, depending on the type of establishment. This accommodation tax is divided into two parts: one that the Generalitat liquidates ---of which it transfers 50% to the City Council---, and a municipal surcharge directly managed by the city, which now stands at four euros per person per night, the maximum legal amount allowed by regulations.
Given the open debate about the possibility of continuing to increase the municipal surcharge, the UB has analyzed its impact on revenue: for each euro of increase, an additional 2.5 million could be collected annually, according to a calculation that takes into account quantitative variables but does not analyze whether a potential increase could discourage or not the arrival of tourists.
The city that charges cruise passengers the most
Given this debate, the study has also looked at how other European cities tax their visitors, and concludes that the port where the most is paid is Barcelona, and by a distance from the rest. Of the 780 ports with cruise activity in the EU, 16 have a specific tax for cruise passengers. Of these 16 cities that charge, four are located in Catalonia, and three in the Balearic Islands. In addition to Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca and Hamburg are the only European ports with more than one million movements per year that charge cruise passengers: in Palma, it is two euros and, in Hamburg, between 0.5 and five euros, depending on the type of ship and only if it includes an overnight stay.
Transit cruise passenger, more taxes than spending
In this context, the study has also wanted to focus on the visitor who has been the target of criticism in recent years: the cruise passenger who arrives in the city aboard the ship, visits it intensively in a few hours, and then sails away again, a group that represents 2.8% of the city's visitors. Analyzing their contribution through taxes and the municipal expenditure they entail in services such as cleaning and security, the study reaches a conclusion: transit cruise passengers are the only visitors to the city who do not stay overnight and who have a positive balance for municipal coffers.
Specifically, cruise passengers who stop over in the city generate an impact per person per day of 3.3 euros in taxes for the City Council, while the UB estimates that they generate an expenditure on services of 3.1 euros. Thus, the transit cruise passenger is the only non-overnight visitor with a positive balance at a contributory level ---of 0.2 euros daily---, due to the fact that their activity is taxed, something that does not happen with the rest of the visitors who come to spend a few hours in the city.
The study, which does not consider the extra impact these visitors generate on services such as cleaning and security, is based on 2023 data, before the municipal surcharge rose from 3.25 euros to the current four, so the difference could be greater in 2024. "Revenue per person per day is usually lower than the expenditure they entail for the City Council; in the case of transit cruise passengers, the revenue is higher," Suriñach stressed.
As Serrano highlighted, "cruise passengers are the only visitors who are contributing for spending a few hours in the city," through this fee. To increase revenue from this group, the Clia executive rejected the possibility of increasing the fee: if more is to be collected, instead of raising it, he advocates "increasing the collection base" and going for more cruise passengers to call at Barcelona, while the city remains immersed in redefining its tourism model and the role its visitors should play.