Why choose a small ship cruise to Dubrovnik?

We’ll put it plainly: it’s not responsible to sail into Dubrovnik on a big cruise ship. This is a city that struggles with overtourism on a thrice-a-day basis between May and September. And it’s no secret. As travelers, we should know better than to barge our way into Dubrovnik on an 8,000-passenger monolith. We’ve heard about the cruise crowds and the Game of Thrones set-jetters intent on only admiring the city’s fictional doppelganger. They’ve been in the headlines for years.

Powell Ettinger, founder of our partners the Small Cruise Ship Collection, says:
“Dubrovnik is one of those iconic places that everyone’s heard of and everyone wants to go to. Game of Thrones has driven more people there, so that all just contributes to overcrowding, and it’s not that big a place. A lot of that is derived from big ships. The city is trying to address this. They are limiting the number of ships that can visit per day, which will help. They’re putting prices up on some of the attractions, like the walls.”

But it’s not just about the city – it’s about you. Your vacation will be better when you swap the ship’s floating buffet for a (literally) hole-in-the-wall café above the Adriatic. Or if you tour the Old Town with a Croatian guide who remembers the Siege of Dubrovnik. Or if you disembark onto a jetty with 15 shipmates, instead of queuing up for the fleet of 50-seater coaches idling beside the dock.

Read on to find out exactly why you should choose a small ship cruise to Dubrovnik.

Small ships will house anything from eight to 40 to 100 passengers. In our opinion, it’s a case of the smaller the ship the better. You could try a luxury cruise with roomy en suites and a splash pool on the top deck, or glide down the Dalmatian Coast with the family on a flotilla sailing vacation. Your crew will tell you how to avoid the predictable cruise crowds and offer alternative options (say, a bike ride around the Peljesac Peninsula) if you don’t feel like braving the often packed Old Town.

Small ship cruises also ease the congestion around Dubrovnik by avoiding using coaches to transfer passengers from Gruz port to Dubrovnik Old Town. After all, the walled city center is only a 20-minute bus ride or 35-minute walk away. Read more about how big cruise ships contribute to overtourism in our responsible tourism guide to Dubrovnik.

Dolphins have a nose for the massive cruise ships crashing through the Adriatic, and prefer to steer well clear. Small ships, on the other hand, slide near-seamlessly through their sensitive habitat. You’re not going to see humpbacks back-flipping off the bow, but it’s not uncommon to see a pod of dolphins surfing the wake from your boat or playing in the bays around Hvar in the early morning. Monk seals are rare but there, too.

The relatively tiny environmental footprint of these small cruise ships is largely down to the Croatian crew, who care deeply about their homeland. The Adriatic Sea is their backyard and they’re pretty zealous about keeping it clean. Small boats also give you immediate access to those crystal waters. You’ll be able to don your snorkel, and step off the sea ladder and straight into the sea.

Powell Ettinger, from the Small Cruise Ship Collection, thinks there’s another environmental reason to support small ship cruises: “On the smaller islands in particular, and especially on the Croatian coast, they’re quite dependent on tourism. There are not enough hotels for people that would like to go and stay there, and if they built hotels it would be detrimental to the environment in a variety of ways, and they’d be empty half the year. Whereas the cruise ships bring people in and out and so they don’t need to build extra hotels. That’s part of the theory, anyway.”