PortCrowds

Methodology: how PortCrowds estimates crowds

Built from official port schedules — plain-English forecasts from public data. Here's exactly what goes into them.

Built from official port schedules — not scraped from the internet. Every forecast names its port authority source. How we estimate crowds

Estimates are based on published ship capacities, not actual bookings or how many passengers go ashore.

1. Official schedules, collected daily

We pull published cruise ship schedules from port authorities — the same bodies that assign berths. Each port page credits its source and shows when the data was last fetched. We currently track Nassau (Nassau Cruise Port), Cozumel (APIQROO), Philipsburg, St. Maarten (Port St. Maarten), St. Thomas (WICO), Port Canaveral (Canaveral Port Authority), San Juan (San Juan Cruise Port), Ketchikan (City of Ketchikan), Bermuda (Department of Marine & Ports), Tampa (Port Tampa Bay), Barbados (Barbados Port Inc.), Grand Cayman (Port Authority of the Cayman Islands), San Diego (Port of San Diego), Los Angeles (Ports America), San Francisco (Port of San Francisco), Vancouver (Vancouver Fraser Port Authority), Victoria (Greater Victoria Harbour Authority), Baltimore (Maryland Port Administration), Barcelona (Port de Barcelona), Helsinki (Port of Helsinki), Tallinn (Port of Tallinn), Quebec City (Port of Quebec), Sydney (Port of Sydney), Bar Harbor (Town of Bar Harbor), Icy Strait Point (Icy Strait Point operator ship calendar), Valletta (Valletta Cruise Port), Dubrovnik (Dubrovnik Port Authority), Cabo San Lucas (ASIPONA Cabo San Lucas), Antigua (Antigua Cruise Port), Puerto Vallarta (ASIPONA Puerto Vallarta), and Stavanger (Port of Stavanger).

2. Passenger estimates from ship capacities

For each port-day we add up the published passenger capacity (lower berth) of every scheduled ship. That gives an estimated cruise-passenger figure for the day — a capacity-based planning estimate, not a headcount. We don't pretend to know actual bookings — a ship can sail below capacity — and not every passenger goes ashore at once, so treat the figure as an upper bound.

3. Compared against a busy day

Raw passenger counts are hard to interpret — 3,000 people is a quiet day in Nassau and a packed one in Ketchikan. So we compare each day against a busy day for that port: the 90th percentile of daily passenger totals in the port's own official schedule, i.e. a load the port demonstrably handles:

  • Not Crowded — under half of a busy day
  • A Little Crowded — half to 80% of a busy day
  • Crowded — 80–105% of a busy day
  • Super Crowded — over 105% of a busy day

We also flag arrival overlap: when 3 or more ships arrive within the same hour, the morning rush at terminals and excursion meeting points is noticeably worse — even if the total passenger count looks moderate.

4. Provisional flags

Dates more than 7 days out are marked provisional. Cruise lines change itineraries for weather, maintenance, and operational reasons — sometimes with only days of notice. We re-check the 7-day window daily and flag changes.

Limitations

  • Estimates use published capacities, not actual passenger counts.
  • Some ports don't publish machine-readable schedules; we only cover ports with reliable official sources.
  • Last-minute itinerary changes (especially around hurricane season) can make even near-term forecasts wrong — always confirm with your cruise line.
  • Crew members also come ashore and aren't counted in passenger figures.