Britons choose their favourite port

British cruisers have voted Venice their favourite port in the entire world in a new survey of the best cruise destinations. A Yougov poll asked cruise passengers to list their favourite ports and Venice just beat Barcelona winning a total of five per cent of the vote.

Generally, Mediterranean ports were popular with cruise takers – 15% of the responses listed a Mediterranean port as favourite, with Caribbean ports next on the list. Surprisingly , Road Town port on the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands scored more highly with British cruise takers than much better known Caribbean ports such as St John’s in Antigua or Bridgetown in Barbados. In American ports, Miami came first and Vancouver took the top spot in Canada. Liverpool and Southampton were both popular, receiving around the same percentage of votes as Sydney and Stockholm.

Cruise passengers said that scenery and good local excursions were key criteria in deciding how good a port was, while nearly half said that local culture was important to them and a quarter cited good regional food and drink as being part of their decision.