October the 16th, 2024 – Croatia no longer appears on the top 5 2025 destination list for the previously faithful Germans. Is this cause for legitimate concern? Maybe.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/VL/Ramila Kovacevic writes, the summer travel season of 2024 is over, but many are already making extensive plans for next year. This is especially true of the most numerous guests in most Mediterranean countries, the Germans, who traditionally book their holidays earlier than most other Europeans.
This year, according to a poll conducted by the German portal Urlaubsguru among 3,000 respondents, 83% of German families are already planning where to go next year in July. On the one hand, as expected, families are mostly tied to the dates of the school holidays, and early booking brings savings of up to thirty percent.
not all of them plan on leaving germany
Last year in the most visited country, Spain, there were only a few tens of thousands of Germans, less than 11 million. In the same year, Turkey hosted around 6.2 million German tourists, Greece welcomed 4.7, Portugal 2.1, and Egypt 1.6 million. Croatia, on the other hand, was chosen by slightly more than 3.3 million Germans for their holiday last year, about 100,000 less than the previous year and quite possibly slightly more than this year.
In the first nine months of 2024, approximately three million guests from Germany visited this country, but even that was five percent less than last year. In Croatia, the Germans here broke the record in 2022, when there were more than 3.4 million of them. Whether they were in plus or minus, they’ve been Croatia’s most numerous foreign guests every year for many years now.
For German families, Croatia isn’t yet on their top 5 2025 destination list for next year’s summer. So far, according to Urlaubsguru, Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Greece and Portugal are all on it. Although Croatia hosts more German tourists during the year than, for example, Portugal or Egypt, it’s no secret that some Croatian destinations have either lost Germans over the years for many reasons.
Many Adriatic destinations haven’t developed their offer for family guests and in recent years have attracted couples, young people, etc. One such example is the extremely popular Hvar, where for years it has been rare to meet German guests with children holidaying in private accommodation.
Despite the fact that Croatia currently doesn’t appear on the German top 5 2025 destination list, the Germans travel in such numbers that things can rapidly alter. How that will be distributed, and which country will take more or less than the year before, depends entirely on the hosts. With that being said, it should be borne in mind that holiday travel in Germany is especially popular among families, and certain tourist countries have more to offer than Croatia in this regard.
Not all Germans are planning to abroad, 22 percent of those surveyed in the Urlaubsguru survey plan to spend their holidays elsewhere in Germany. About 12 percent of them will take several trips, 16 percent will combine visits to domestic and foreign destinations, and 23 percent of them are planning a holiday exclusively abroad. Only two percent of Germans surveyed answered that they weren’t planning any travel in 2025.
croatia has become expensive, and the german travel budget is shrinking…
“Travel budgets for the Germans are slightly smaller, but interestingly, far-flung, luxury destinations such as the Maldives are still very popular. This shows that German tourists attach great importance to a high-quality and relaxing break and are willing to save for that,” said Daniel Krahn, the co-founder and CEO of Urlaubsguru.
At the same time, consumption even among ultra rational Germans begins even before setting off on a trip. The survey showed that 43 percent of Germans spend between 50 and 100 euros on preparations in the week before taking a trip. A little less than 30 percent of them spend from 100 to 200 euros, and 13 percent of them spend even more.
There’s plenty of time left before next summer to learn whether or not Croatia will make it back on the German top 5 2025 list, but it certainly will lead some to take a closer look at pricing and what’s being offered in return.
