October the 4th, 2024 – The Croatian hospitality sector has seen a comforting 490 million euro turnover for the month of September 2024.
As Jadranka Dozan/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, over the past few weeks, it has been more and more evident that the summer tourism season has been pretty solid this year. Dubrovnik’s city administration was the first to brag about September’s tourist numbers, emphasising the increase in the number of arrivals by six percent and overnight stays by five percent compared to the same month last year.
While the September indicators of arrivals and overnight stays at the level of the whole of Croatia are still awaited, the Tax Administration’s data on fiscalisation in cash transactions is already available. That data reflects the extent of goods and services paid for with both cash and cards.
Looking first at Croatian hospitality, the data for the activity of providing accommodation services comes first. Businesses subject to fiscalisation issued seven percent fewer bills/receipts in September 2024 than in the same month last year. Their value stood at 303 million euros or 1.1 percent less than last year.
At the same time, in that same Croatian hospitality industry, both the number of receipts issued and their value were higher compared to last September. An impressive 490 million euros of turnover was recorded, which is about 40 million euros or 9.3 percent more than last year.
The cumulative picture for the first nine months of 2024 confirmed that the growth rate of fiscalised traffic in the previous months had been better. In the provision of accommodation through fiscal devices, a turnover of more than 2.4 billion euros passed through the system, which is 7.6 percent more than by the end of September 2023. The increase in value was achieved by there having been three percent more bills issued.
The same is true for the entire Croatian hospitality industry. When we look at the fiscalised turnover of cafes, restaurants and other forms of food and beverage preparation and serving in the system, we see continued double-digit turnover growth rates.
In the first nine months of 2024, business working within these branches of Croatian hospitality issued six percent more receipts for their services than last year. The difference is that their value this September was half a billion euros more (15 percent higher), reaching of 3.9 billion euros.
A significantly higher percentage growth in reported traffic than in the number of actual payments can hypothetically partially reflect a change in the structure of consumption. That said, the difference in the growth of the total number and amount of bills issued is for the most part undoubtedly a consequence of higher prices.
After all, data from the country’s statisticians on inflation also confirms that the prices of services grew more than overall inflation did. Within the category of services, hotels and restaurants stood out in terms of growth. Fiscalised traffic in some other industries has also seen a very pronounced seasonal impact. Among them are taxi services, which recorded very strong year-on-year growth last month and cumulatively throughout the entire year.
As such, when compared to September last year, last month, 27 percent more receipts worth 18.2 million euros were issued, equal to 28.3 percent more than in September 2023. Since the beginning of 2024, however, taxi services have reported 16 percent more bills issued and turnover which is almost 25 percent higher. That saw it reach a total of 131.6 million euros by the end of September 2024.
The tourist season is, of course, a time of extremely strong traffic growth for the domestic retail sector as well. In total, in the retail sector (excluding motor vehicles), as well as in accommodation, slightly fewer bills were issued in September (-1%) than last year. However, from the beginning of the year to the end of last month, the number of bills issued in trade was 1.7 percent higher.
Meanwhile, looking annual comparisons, traffic grew by slightly less than six percent in September – by 10.3 percent in the first nine months of 2024, reaching a total of almost 20 billion euros. Of this, about 40 percent or 8.1 billion euros were handled by the fiscal cash registers of retail chains, that is, the so-called non-specialised stores selling mainly food, drinks and tobacco.
Last month, they did, however, record a year-on-year drop in the number of bills by four percent, with the same percentage growth in turnover (to 922 million euros). Cumulatively speaking, this year, with one percentage point fewer receipts having been issued, there was still an 8.4 percent increase in turnover.
At the level of all activities, this year’s fiscalised turnover reached almost 34 billion euros at the end of September. That is 11 percent or 3.4 billion euros more than last year. This result was achieved with three percent more payments recorded within the fiscalisation system.
