Development of Competitive–Cooperative Relationships among Mediterranean Cruise Ports since 2000

Abstract

Cruise shipping has been extremely popular in recent years, and one of the fastest-growing areas has been the Mediterranean. In the paper, we examine the evaluation of possible competitive–cooperative relationships among Mediterranean cruise ports for the period 2000–2017. To this end, we use three models: the dynamic shift-share model, the Lotka–Volterra model (LVM), and the logistic model (LM). The evaluation of basic market indices is included for completeness. The analysis shows that cruise traffic is in a saturation phase. The shift-share and LVM models reveal that interaction among ports is not significant for the large ports, but could be essential for the small ones.

Keywords

• cruise traffic
• cruise ports
• mediterranean
• market metrics
• shift-share analysis
• competition analysis