It might seem that Croatian tourism is continuing to boom, but is it? While the country recorded an excellent pre-season which is in line with Croatia’s desire for year-round tourism, it seems that Croatia’s hotels are experiencing a worse booking rate than they did last year.
As Marija Crnjak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 5th of July, 2019, numerous additional efforts are being made to make sure last minute reservations in Croatia’s hotels manage to close in on, or reach last year’s figures, the Croatian Tourism Association (Hrvatska Udruga Turizma) revealed yesterday.
By the end of June this year, the number of booking reservations for the height of the summer season in Croatia’s hotels fell by three to seven percent in comparison to the same period last year, and as previously mentioned, additional efforts are being made to try to get last-minute reservations up to last year’s rate. This was revealed yesterday by the Croatian Tourism Association upon presenting the results of the hotel sector in the second quarter.
“The first half of the current year shows that the announcements of market challenges and turbulence from the beginning of this year were accurate. In the conditions caused by economic uncertainties from emerging markets and growing competition in the Mediterranean, the struggle for each guest is intensifying, especially during the main tourist season. All the information we have is that this tourist season will be the most challenging one over the last few years,” said the director of the Croatian Tourism Association, Veljko Ostojić.
He added that in the adjustment of policies to adapt to the new market realities, the real ”borders” of the competitiveness of Croatian tourism can be clearly seen. Most deem Croatia’s tourist industry to be continually violated by a much talked about high VAT rate, and that VAT rate is higher than in other countries across the Mediterranean who also rely heavily on tourism as a strong if not main economic branch, as well as in neighbouring Hungary and Austria.
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