In a previous piece we argued for a simple principle: if we want to understand which services seafarers actually need ashore, we need to ask seafarers themselves. There's a second question that matters just as much today: even when the right service exists, will the seafarer have time to use it?
Shore leave is becoming a scarce resource
Modern port operations are built for speed. Faster cargo handling, tighter crew workloads, watchkeeping, inspections and security requirements all directly limit a seafarer's ability to go ashore.
Shore Leave: Rare, Brief and in Danger of Extinction, a World Maritime University (WMU) study based on an ITF Seafarers’ Trust survey, gives a sense of scale. It analysed 5,879 seafarer responses. More than a quarter of respondents reported no shore leave at all, and roughly a third managed to go ashore only once or twice during an entire contract averaging 6.6 months.
But one figure matters most for port-based welfare: even among seafarers who did get ashore, 47% spent less than three hours there, and another 46.5% spent between three and six hours. For the large majority who do get shore leave, this isn't a free day in town — it's a narrow window.
When a few hours become a choice
Picture it from the seafarer's side. The ship is in an unfamiliar port. After clearing the terminal gate, there are a few hours to spare. A supermarket or shopping mall is close by. The Seafarers’ Centre is further away and needs extra travel time. What do you choose?
Going shopping is a rational choice. A modern mall often lets a seafarer buy groceries and essentials, find a pharmacy, get a SIM card, and use a café — all in one trip, often with free Wi-Fi. The same WMU study found that shopping is in fact the leading reason seafarers go ashore at all: 76% of seafarers who got shore leave used it to shop.
Under a tight shore leave window, the deciding factor stops being how many services are theoretically available, and becomes a simple equation: time + distance = practical necessity. The 2025 SEAFiT Crew Survey, drawing on roughly 22,000 seafarers across 1,700 ships, points the same way — citing tight port schedules, short stays and long distances between terminals and city areas among the main drivers of low shore leave satisfaction.
So what's happening to Seafarers’ Centres?
Here the conclusions need care. Shore Leave and the Future of Port-Based Welfare, an ITF Seafarers’ Trust study published in 2025, gathered 96 responses from representatives of 83 welfare centres and organisations across 25 countries. 61% reported a decline in the number of seafarers spending time at their centres since the pandemic began, and 68% said most visiting seafarers now stay under two hours.
These figures shouldn't be read as proof that every Seafarers’ Centre worldwide is losing visitors, or that centres themselves are becoming obsolete. There are clear counter-examples: the Mission to Seafarers centre in Colombo publishes its own cumulative figures — 3,229 seafarers visited in 2023, 3,737 in 2024, and 3,968 in 2025. That's a meaningful exception, and it shows the problem is more complex than a blanket "seafarers have stopped visiting centres."
Still, when shore leave is measured in hours, distances to town are long, and workload stays high, a decline in attendance wouldn't be surprising wherever access to a centre is difficult or a seafarer doesn't see enough reason to spend a large share of their limited time getting there.
At some Seafarers’ Centres, the range of services on offer has genuinely stayed fairly traditional — but it would be wrong to generalise that to the whole port-based welfare system. Plenty of centres are actively building out transport, connectivity, recreation space, crew assistance and ship visiting. So this isn't a critique of Seafarers’ Centres. The real question is different: how do we make existing and new welfare services genuinely reachable for a seafarer with almost no time to spare?
One direction is Wellness Zones — fast-recovery spaces built into Seafarers’ Centres or placed as close as possible to a seafarer's actual route ashore, designed to ease physical and emotional strain in a short window. But building a new service doesn't solve the underlying problem on its own. A good service is one the seafarer actually knows about.
Picture a port that already has a good Seafarers’ Centre, a free shuttle, a Wellness Zone, a pharmacy and supermarket nearby, an active mission, and union support — everything a seafarer could need. Does a seafarer arriving there for the first time know any of it exists? Where, in a few minutes, can they find out which gate to leave through, where the centre is, whether transport runs and when, and how long the round trip will take? With only a few hours of shore leave, hunting for that information starts eating into the time itself.
That's exactly why, in our view, this kind of information now belongs inside the definition of seafarer welfare, not outside it — and why the traditional understanding of port-based welfare needs to widen. Building the service is no longer enough. It has to come with visibility, a precise description of where it actually is, information that's current right now, and a fast way to act on it. A Seafarers’ Centre a few kilometres from the terminal can offer excellent services and still be practically unreachable if the seafarer doesn't know it exists or how to get there in time. The same goes for a free shuttle, a welfare visitor, a maritime mission, union support, or any other shore-based service.
Access to verified local information should therefore be treated as part of a port's modern welfare infrastructure — not as an optional add-on. The task facing seafarer welfare organisations today isn't only building new services. It's making the ones that already exist visible, understandable and reachable. Because in a modern port, shore leave itself is no longer the only scarce resource. Today, the scarcest resource a seafarer has ashore is time.
Sources
- ITF Seafarers’ Trust / World Maritime University (2025) — Shore Leave: Rare, Brief and in Danger of Extinction — seafarerstrust.org
- ITF Seafarers’ Trust (2025) — Shore Leave and the Future of Port-Based Welfare — seafarerstrust.org
- SEAFiT Crew Survey Report 2025 — seafit.safety4sea.com
- The Mission to Seafarers — Colombo Centre, published attendance statistics — missiontoseafarers.org
All figures above are taken from the sources listed. If you've spotted an error — let us know. Corrections are made openly and noted at the end of the piece. See how we work.