Maritime passenger transport has been slowly growing over the past few decades in the Adriatic, whether it is for passengers on round trips or for liner traffic. The aim of this paper is to carry out a comparison of passenger traffic on the Adriatic to the countries and regions that exit the Adriatic. Various trends in the Adriatic are notable, mostly related to the tourist valorisation of the coast and the natural features of the coast. The Croatian part of the Adriatic has recorded very high rates of regular liner transportation, mainly ferries and catamarans to the islands, because the majority of the indented coastline of the Croatian coast is the only possibility for linking island settlements with the mainland. On the other hand, the Italian coastline, under the influence of a significant increase in the number of tourists, records a steady increase in the number of passengers on round trips, while liner shipping is almost entirely oriented towards international traffic of passengers. Therefore, it is noted from the results of this paper that the main driver of the development of passenger traffic is passenger tourism.