Dubrovnik Airport was the third busiest airport in Croatia in 2016 after Zagreb Airport and Split Airport in terms of passenger throughput and has the country’s longest runway.
New passenger terminal started operating in February, 2017 and it is announced that the moving to the new terminal will be completely finished by summer season 2017. In the first phase terminal A is to be completely closed and check in counters and security checkpoints are to be moved to the new terminal.
Further expansion is planned for completion in 2019.
Can something go wrong here? Well…
The high season has not started yet, but one can already hear the complaints at Dubrovnik Airport from the people waiting to welcome their friends, realtives or guests, whether as individuals or organized groups. I went to welcome my own guests at 5:05 p.m., on Saturday, April 8th, and there were only two planes: one from Nantes and one from Madrid at a time. Both planes were full and there were three big organized groups (I counted!): what happened is that the travel agents waiting for the groups could not go out or move to another place before each member of the group came and registered. After a tick in the box on the waiting list, the guests stayed next to their allocated travel agents with all their hand and normal luggage waiting for the other members to join them. This took around 20 minutes, but the problem was that the groups from the other plane started arriving and a small arrival waiting area was overcrowded and the managing all these groups in such a small and narrow area was close to impossible.
Taxi drivers, travel agents, friends and relatives started complaining since they could not find their loved ones after having waited for them more than half an hour. According to one taxi driver this seems to happen quite often and as he puts it: “It often gets really busy and when I hold a paper with a guest’s name written on it, I am not sure how the guests are able to find me and read their name. And bear in mind, this is a low season, how will this place look during the summer?”
