There are 41 Days in April in the Kingdom of Accidental Tourism

May 14, 2020 – One way to boost tourism is to prolong the season. The brilliant minds running the Kingdom of Accidental Tourism have a smarter solution – create more days in a month. 41 days in April for example. And then get tourists to spend the night in Croatia without visiting. Pure genius!

Last night, the Croatian media reported on the official tourism numbers for April. Terrible numbers were inevitable, there is no chance of bringing tourists across closed borders during a pandemic. But the numbers were sensational, and hardly anyone has noticed until now. When I first saw the numbers, I assumed some journalist had mistakenly put in an extra digit and the rest had blindly copied. Here is how HINA announced the numbers:

ZAGREB, May 13 (Hina) – There were 9,500 tourists in Croatia in April 2020, generating 392,000 overnight stays, which is a drop of 99 and 88 percent on the year respectively, according to data from eVisitor and the Croatian National Tourist Board.

That’s a lot of overnights for less than 10,000 tourists, I thought. But just as tourists cannot come in, those who are here cannot get out so easily, so it kind of made sense that most tourists were overnighting. I have never been good at maths, but my 11-year-old daughter is a maths genius. 

“How much is 9,500 times 30?”

“Just a sec, Dad. It is 285,000.”

So with 9,500 tourists sleeping every night in April is 285,000 nights. And yet in the Kingdom of Accidental Tourism, we managed to rack up an impressive 392,000 nights. Another calculation, and it seems that the month of April has 41 days in our beautiful kingdom. 

This had to be a journalist mistake, right?

Wrong. 

I went to the Croatian National Tourist Board official website to check the statistics directly. HINA had rounded the numbers up slightly, but there is was – 9,453 arrivals, generating 391,628. Which means that there are at least 41 days in the month of April in the Kingdom of Accidental Tourism. 

And if you were lucky enough to host a tourist in the ‘Nekomercijalni smjestaj’ (non-commercial accommodation), April was a great month, for guests averaged over 110 nights each in the 30-day month of April. 

Guests in Split Dalmatia slept for an average of 74 nights in April, closely followed by Zadar at 73 nights. 

So who are our marathon overnighters? According to our award-winning eVisitor system, over 70% were locals (understandable) who managed about 40 nights between them (not so understandable).

Bosnians were dedicated overnighters in total nights, but managed only 47 overnights in April, which was nothing compared to the average Italian who spent more than two nights in Croatia every night in April at 67.

But the REAL heroes…

 Let’s hear it for the 4 Latvians who managed an impressive 136 overnights each between them. There may have only been one South African tourist in all Croatia in April, but it was a good one. At 149 overnight stays, our bold South African guest was one night short of sleep 5 nights for every night in April.

But the best was yet to come. For the Kings recently launched a campaign called Croatia Long Distance Love. You can see the first video above. I, like many others, assumed that the point of the campaign was to remind future travellers of Croatia’s beauty and to entice them to visit at a later date. 

It seems I was wrong, as the big data never lies.

For many years, there has been a popular saying in Croatia, whenever examples of bad service or tourism experiences are mentioned. – tell the tourists to stay home and just send the money.

But the data shows us that the Kings have achieved something quite remarkable this last month, at the height of a global pandemic. For the tourists are staying at home and sending the money. 

How else to explain zero tourists from Belarus, but 89 overnights. Or 35 from Luxemburg, 32 from Estonia (must be something to do that Estonian digital prowess, perhaps?), 31 from Indonesia, 30 from Morocco, 29 from Qatar, and 17 from Thailand. 

Impressive stuff!

I am not an expert, but perhaps there is a mistake in the data entry. It is not a major issue, as tourism is quiet and this will be easy to fix. But imagine if this happened in a country whose sole strategy and measure of success is numbers, numbers, numbers. How reliable is the data we have been served up all these years? Thankfully we live in Croatia, where there is a proper strategy, and nobody ever talks about numbers, numbers, numbers. 

But perhaps there is a perfectly reasonable explanation, so I will write to the tourist board to enquire. Now that they have finished this exhaustive update of the statistics, I might also check on their plans to update the information on how to fly to Croatia.

For the latest from the Mighty State of Uhljebistan, follow our dedicated Uhljeb section.

 

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