Tens of thousands of Polish tourists come to Croatia every year.
Wojtek and Agnieszka Tylus are a young couple from Lubin in southeastern Poland who run one of the most popular blogs in the country, called CroLove. They are followed on Facebook by more than 48,000 people, and they have thousands of fans on other social networks like Instagram and Twitter. They first visited Croatia seven years ago and immediately fell in love with Croatia. Since then, they have returned about twenty times, reports Jutarnji List on September 12, 2018.
Wojtek, a 35-year-old internet marketing specialist, and Agnieszka, a 32-year-old physician, started their blog as a travel diary. However, due to the demand from other Polish travellers who wanted to find out more information about Croatia, their blog has become a travel guide which is partly responsible for the strong growth in the number of tourists coming from Poland in recent years. The Croatian National Tourist Board recognised the blogging duo in 2015, when it awarded them with the Grand Prix for an article about Split.
“Our first trip to Croatia took place in 2011. We fell in love with your country immediately. The visit was completely spontaneous, without planning, with no set destinations. We only knew that we wanted to see Dalmatia at all costs,” says Wojtek.
“Croatia has become a shelter from everyday life for us, a place where we get rested and filled with energy in order to be able to get back to work,” says the Polish couple. They prefer south Dalmatia, Makarska Riviera and Konavle, where they hope to build a cottage one day. “We will spend the days on the balcony,” Wojtek and Agnieszka say, whose blog CroLove made many Polish travellers want to see the sights of Croatia.
“We are currently discovering Slavonia, and we have also visited Hrvatsko Zagorje, Istria and most of the towns in Dalmatia. Dalmatia is our favourite, but we have not yet visited Kvarner,” says the couple.
In 2017, there were 971,402 arrivals and 6,336,958 overnights by Polish tourists, representing a rise of 23.33% in arrivals and 21.1% in overnights compared to the previous year. The Polish market, with a 6.21% share in the total number of overnights in Croatia in 2017, was at the fifth position, behind Germany, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria.
So far this season, there have been 839,207 recorded arrivals and 5,576,285 overnight stays of Polish citizens. Five to seven days in July or August, mostly in household facilities in one of Central Dalmatian destinations, such as Makarska, Omiš, Baška Voda, Šibenik and Rogoznica – this is how most Polish tourists spend their holidays in Croatia.
Translated from Jutarnji List (reported by Petra Plivelić).
