Análisis de la centralidad portuaria y los flujos de navegación inter-portuaria del mercado europeo de cruceros

Abstract

Europe has established itself as the second most important area in the world in terms of cruise traffic, due to the high number of ports that can accommodate cruise ships. The development of the cruise industry has increased the interest in finding the most important ports in this maritime traffic, and the reasons that have led them to this relevant position. The purpose of this study is to analyse the inter-port navigation flows of cruise ships positioned in European destination regions. We propose the hubs and authorities centrality metric as a directional synthesis of the hubs centrality and authorities centrality to explore a cyclical and directional element of character in the cruise network. To investigate the hubs and authorities centrality we have applied social network analysis. The main goal of the paper is to develop a numerical analysis to identify the hub ports in the European cruise port network through which is able to explain network dynamics of the cruise industry of this region. For this purpose, the port of origin and destination of each cruise ship call in each port is analysed to obtain the hubs and authorities centrality. The results of this work can be used to develop a route deviation analysis to repair and/or refit shipyards in order to obtain the position that a shipyard has with respect to the main navigation flows of cruise ships. In addition, the results provide valuable information for environmental impact studies.