As Morski/Kazimir Skrbic writes, with a record number of tourist arrivals recorded from January the 1st to April the 15th this year, and significantly better numbers when it comes to overnight stays than last year, the island of Vir is rubbing its hands in hopes for another great summer tourist season that should surpass last year.
In less than four tourist months, 1,485 arrivals of both domestic and foreign guests and 23,181 overnight stays were recorded on the island of Vir, which is 109.1 percent better in terms of overnight stays and 58.9 percent better in terms of tourist arrivals when compared to last year.
”We’re more than satisfied with the current numbers of Vir tourism arrivals and the number of overnight stays realised by guests. This is especially true when it comes to the arrivals of guests, which are the largest since we’ve been monitoring the statistics of tourist traffic. We also have better data on overnight stays on average than we did back during the record year of 2019, when we had 2.6 million overnight stays, which is a serious indicator of the success of the upcoming summer season,” explained the director of the Vir Tourist Boardm Srdjan Liveric.
The highest Vir tourism numbers when it comes to arrivals from the first day of January to mid-April was recorded by the neighbouring Slovenes (26.4 percent of the total number of arrivals of foreigners), Germans (19.1 percent), Bosnians and Herzegovinians (14.9 percent), Austrians (9.71 percent), and Hungarians (9.61). These five nations accounted for approximately 80 percent of all arrivals and overnight stays on this Dalmatian island, representing a tourist ”big five” of sorts, but by the end of the month they will be joined by Czechs and Slovaks who’ve been coming to that island in increasing numbers.
”We’re only expecting their explosion at the end of April and at the beginning of May, because we’ve been recording dozens of transfers of ownership of holiday homes on Vir, and most of them are being purchased by Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians,” explained Liveric.
When it comes to the comparison of Vir tourism figures with last year’s pre-season, the current number of 23,181 overnight stays and 1,485 tourist arrivals is stronger by 109.1 percent in terms of overnight stays and by 58.9 percent in terms of arrivals. At the same time, current overnight stays are around 80 percent of the record number of overnight stays in the pre-season of 2020, but current statistics also reveal a significantly higher share and number of foreign guests. As such, two years ago, foreigners realised 9,978 out of a total of 28,980 overnight stays (34.4 percent share) in three and a half months, while now, 13,848 overnight stays out of a total of 23,181 (as much as 59.7 percent share) have been recorded.
The difference was created by Slovenian visitors with a fantastic growth of overnight stays of 383.9 percent (now 3,843, where as the former number was a far smaller 816) compared to last year’s pre-season, then with 110.8 percent growth compared to 2020 and 32.4 percent growth compared to 2019. Hungarians recorded 136.9 percent growth from last night, Slovaks 96.7 percent, Austrians 84.9 percent, Germans 68.5 percent and Bosnians and Herzegovinians 63.1 percent growth. With a slightly lower number of overnight stays, Poles, Swiss and Swedes still grew significantly.
If we statistically go back to pre-pandemic 2019, which was a record with the total annual numbers of overnight stays and arrivals, and the last one outside the context of the global coronavirus crisis, this quarter seems to announce spectacular numbers. Recorded overnight stays are 35.5 percent better than they were in 2019, when 17,105 tourist overnight stays were realised, while arrivals are 24.1 percent higher (1,197 three years ago).
For more on Vir tourism, check out our travel section.
