December the 6th, 2023 – One significant in investment in Platak is set to boost skiing in Croatia this winter. Another cable car is also on the cards.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, skiing in Croatia is set to get a boost this winter, as skiing on Platak will be better than ever before. A brand new modern cable car, 800 metres long and boasting 114 seats, is all ready for skiers. It will be able to transport as many as 2,400 skiers per hour. The old cable car, the capacity of which is a maximum of 900 skiers per hour, isn’t heading into retirement, but instead remaining “on call” for eventual situations in which it will be needed.
The new cable car investment is worth an enormous 4.8 million euros, which brings the investments in the Platak ski resort over the last decade to as much as 15 million euros, according to Večernji list. One of the biggest investments was the snow cannons back in 2020, which made it possible to ski on Platak for 74 days last winter. There’s no natural snow yet, but the cannons have been deployed and, when four consecutive days with temperatures lower than four degrees below zero and humidity in the air of 60-70 percent occur, Platak will be covered with artificial snow.
Hope for more visitors and a longer season for Skiing in Croatia
“Last winter, we certainly wouldn’t have had such a long season if we didn’t have a our snow making system. Thanks to the cannons, we managed to have 74 skiing days, or 59 days in the area of the old cable car. There were 20,000 skiers, and about 75,000 winter visitors in general. The highest number of tickets sold in one day was 1,150. There were 4,000 people at Platak on just that day. The limiting factor is the parking spaces, the number of restaurants and the length of the trails, so it isn’t really possible to significantly increase the numbers in one day, but that’s why we’re now hope that with the new cable car, we’ll have many more strong days like that. We’re currently in the testing phase. We received the operating permit ten days ago and only one more hurdle, the final technical inspection, now remains. That’s currently scheduled for the beginning of next week,” revealed director Alen Udovič, director of the Goranski Sports Centre that manages the Platak ski resort.
Despite the general increase in prices and the installation of a new cable car, the prices of ski tickets remain unchanged. A daily ticket for skiing on weekends on one of the seven tracks on Platak, spanning a total length of 6,800 metres, will be 22 euros, exactly as it was a year ago. On Platak, you can also still eat something at affordable prices. Meals at Veliki dom Platak currently cost between seven and ten euros, and a bed and breakfast is 24 euros per person.
Skiing in Croatia is much cheaper than in Slovenia
“At the moment, we’re only open for work on weekends, and when the ski season starts, we’ll work during the week as well. We can accommodate 80 guests, and on weekends we’re often full even now. We believe that when skiing in Croatia starts and the new cable car is operational, many more guests than before will come during the week,” stated Antonio Malatestinić, the director of Veliki dom Platak. He also revealed that the winter business season is only slightly better than the summer one.
It’s worth mentioning that the most numerous guests at Platak are locals from across Croatia, but there are also foreigners arriving, mostly from Slovenia. A daily ski pass at this Rijeka ski resort is over 50% cheaper than one in Slovenia.
