Overview
Shipping Intelligence: Port Call Trends helps users analyse port call activity over time and turn historical vessel movement data into macro-economic maritime market insight.
Instead of reviewing individual port call records one by one, you can use Port Call Trends to visualise how arrivals and departures change across ports, countries, vessel types, flags, ownership groups, fuel readiness, engine types, capacities, and other vessel characteristics.
Port Call Trends is the first dashboard within Shipping Intelligence, a workspace designed to help users read vessel and port activity as a signal of broader market movement, including trade activity, regional demand, commodity-linked flows, and vessel deployment trends.
The first release focuses on IMO vessels and is not container-specific.
Who can access Port Call Trends?
Port Call Trends is available through Shipping Intelligence.
As part of the launch campaign, MarineTraffic Enterprise customers may gain access to Shipping Intelligence: Port Call Trends free for one month by contacting their account manager. After the free access period, continued use will require purchase as an add-on to MarineTraffic Enterprise.
Where to find Port Call Trends
After being granted access to the tool by the account management team simply:
Log in to MarineTraffic.
Go to [PLACEHOLDER: confirmed navigation path].
Select Shipping Intelligence.
Open Port Call Trends.
Use the available filters and chart controls to analyse port call activity.
What you can analyse
Port Call Trends helps answer questions such as:
How has port activity changed over time?
Which ports, countries, or regions are seeing more or fewer arrivals and departures?
What can port call activity signal about trade, demand, or regional market movement?
How does vessel activity compare across vessel types, flags, owners, commercial operators, or fleet segments?
Are there seasonal or year-on-year changes in port traffic?
How are vessels with specific characteristics, such as LNG-ready status or dual-fuel engines, distributed across ports or routes?
You can use Port Call Trends to support workflows such as:
Monitoring long-term port traffic trends
Comparing traffic between ports, countries, or regions
Analysing vessel activity for selected fleets, owners, or commercial operators
Identifying year-on-year changes in port activity
Reviewing LNG-ready, dual-fuel, or other fuel-related vessel activity at strategic ports or maritime locations
Supporting market analysis, commercial planning, research, and reporting
Core metrics
Port Call Trends focuses on two main port call activity views:
Arrivals
The Arrivals view shows vessel arrivals over time based on the selected filters and time range.
Use this view to understand inbound vessel activity into selected ports, countries, or regions.
Departures
The Departures view shows vessel departures over time based on the selected filters and time range.
Use this view to understand outbound vessel activity from selected ports, countries, or regions.
Time range and granularity
Port Call Trends supports historical analysis over configurable time periods.
Time range
Port Call Trends can support analysis of up to 5 years of historical port call activity, depending on your account access, selected filters, and available data.
Granularity
Granularity controls how data is grouped in the chart.
Available options may include:
Granularity | Description |
Daily | Day-by-day aggregation |
Weekly | Week-by-week aggregation |
Monthly | Month-by-month aggregation |
Quarterly | Quarter-by-quarter aggregation |
Yearly | Year-by-year aggregation |
Total | Fully aggregated view across the selected time range |
Use daily or weekly granularity for shorter operational reviews. Use monthly, quarterly, or yearly views for longer-term trend analysis.
Filters and split dimensions
Filters help you narrow the analysis to the ports, vessels, ownership groups, and vessel characteristics that matter to your workflow.
Available filters may include:
Port and country filters, such as country, port, and port type
Vessel search by vessel name, IMO number, or MMSI number
Vessel type filters, including generic and detailed vessel type
Flag and vessel characteristics, such as tonnage, DWT, vessel dimensions, and capacity-related fields
Engine, scrubber, and fuel characteristics, such as engine type, scrubber type, fuel type, dual-fuel capability, LNG-ready status, ammonia-ready status, and methanol-ready status
Ownership and management entities, such as Beneficial Owner, Registered Owner, Commercial Manager, Operator, Technical Manager, ISM Manager, Classification Society, and P&I Club
Split dimensions allow you to break down chart results into categories.
For example, instead of viewing total arrivals into a port, you can split the chart by vessel type, flag, destination country, ownership group, or commercial operator.
Available split dimensions may include:
Destination port
Destination country
Vessel name
Vessel type
Flag
Beneficial Owner
Registered Owner
Commercial Manager
Operator
Technical Manager
Chart and table views
Port Call Trends provides visual trend views and table views for analysing arrivals and departures over time.
Bar chart
The bar chart is useful for comparing port call activity across time periods.
Depending on the selected granularity and split dimension, the chart may display:
Total activity by time period
Activity split by selected dimension
Top 10 + Others grouping for split views
Moving average trend lines, where available
Line chart
The line chart is useful for viewing trends over time.
When a split dimension is active, the line chart may show one line per category, helping you compare trends across vessel types, flags, countries, ownership groups, or other dimensions.
Table view
The table view helps you review the rows behind selected chart values.
Use this when you want to move from a visual trend to the underlying records included in that view.
Year-on-year analysis
Year-on-year views help compare activity across years.
This is especially useful for identifying seasonality, growth, or contraction in port activity.
Common examples
Compare port traffic over time
Analyse arrivals and departures across a selected port, country, or vessel type.
Example:
View container ship traffic trends in Piraeus over the last five years.
Compare regional activity
Compare port call activity between ports, countries, or regions.
Example:
Compare tanker trends between Singapore and Fujairah over the last two years.
Analyse commercial operator coverage
Analyse the geographic footprint of vessels linked to a selected commercial operator.
Example:
See which countries vessels linked to a selected commercial operator visited over the last two years.
Identify LNG-ready or dual-fuel vessel activity
Use vessel characteristics to analyse activity for LNG-ready, dual-fuel, or other fuel-related vessel segments.
Example:
Identify LNG-ready or dual-fuel vessels arriving at a strategic port such as Barcelona.
Table view and export
Table view helps you review the rows behind selected chart values.
Export functionality is not included in the initial release.
Data notes and current limitations
Port Call Trends is designed for macro-economic analysis of port call activity across IMO vessels.
As with any large-scale analytics view, results may depend on the availability and completeness of the underlying vessel, ownership, port call, and vessel particulars data.
IMO vessels only in the first release
The first release focuses on IMO vessels only.
Non-IMO port calls may exist in underlying systems, but they are not included in the initial analytics view.
Split views and Top 10 + Others grouping
For split views, Port Call Trends uses Top 10 + Others grouping to keep charts readable when a split dimension contains many categories.
This helps users focus on the leading categories while still keeping the remaining activity represented in the chart.
Why split-view totals may differ from unsplit totals
When using split views with dimensions that contain many categories, the chart may group results to keep the visualisation readable.
This means split views may not always display every individual category separately in the chart. Use the table view to review the rows behind selected chart values.
Export functionality
Export functionality is not included in the initial release.
What Port Call Trends does not show
Port Call Trends focuses on port call activity, vessel attributes, ownership, and vessel characteristics.
It does not provide container-specific, cargo, terminal, or operational performance analytics.
These types of metrics may be covered by dedicated intelligence products or separate datasets.
Frequently asked questions
Is Port Call Trends available for all vessel types?
The first release focuses on IMO vessels across supported vessel types and available data. It is not container-specific.
Is this part of Container Intelligence?
No. Port Call Trends sits within Shipping Intelligence. Container Intelligence is a separate vertical analytics layer focused on container-specific operational intelligence
How much historical data can I analyse?
Port Call Trends can support analysis of up to 5 years of historical port call activity, depending on your account access, selected filters, and available data.
Can I filter by ownership or commercial operator?
Yes. Depending on available data and account configuration, you may be able to filter or split by ownership and management entities such as Beneficial Owner, Registered Owner, Commercial Manager, Operator, Technical Manager, ISM Manager, Classification Society, and P&I Club.
Can I analyse LNG-ready or dual-fuel vessels?
Yes, where data is available. You can use vessel characteristics such as LNG-ready status, dual-fuel capability, engine type, scrubber type, and fuel type to refine your analysis.
Can I see the vessels behind a chart?
Yes. Table view helps you review the rows behind selected chart values.
Can I export the data?
Export functionality is not included in the initial release.
Is this replacing Explore?
Port Call Trends provides a new analytics-focused way to explore port call activity over time. Existing workflows may continue to be available depending on your account and product access.
Best practices
To get the most from Port Call Trends:
Start with a broad query, then add filters gradually.
Use monthly or quarterly granularity for long-term trend analysis.
Use daily or weekly granularity for shorter operational reviews.
Use split dimensions to compare categories within the same chart.
Use Top 10 + Others grouping to keep split views readable.
Avoid combining too many narrow filters at once unless you are investigating a specific vessel, operator, fleet, or ownership group.
Summary
Shipping Intelligence: Port Call Trends helps users analyse port call activity over time, compare trends across ports and vessel segments, and identify market signals using vessel, port, ownership, engine, fuel, and capacity filters.
It adds a new macro-economic market intelligence workspace to MarineTraffic, helping users move from vessel visibility to maritime market intelligence.