As of January 2, 2016, majority of 200,000 Croats who go on skiing holidays every year to one of European ski resorts will pack their bags and leave for Western European slopes. The first week in January is informally called “Croatian Ski Week”, since the ski resorts in Austria, Italy and Slovenia are full of Croatian families with children.
Although there are no accurate data on how many people from Croatia go to skiing holidays abroad, since in addition to travel agencies, many people go individually or as part of various groups organized by schools, skiing clubs and associations, travel agencies estimate that during this winter ski season there will be around 200,000 Croatian guests at foreign destinations.
Most of them, nearly 70 percent, travel during the first week of the New Year, from 2 to 9 January, because this is the last week of the winter school holidays in Croatia. People without children travel to various destinations in Europe from December to early April. The other reason is that the prices during this week are usually somewhat lower than during other parts of the year.
The fact that the numbers could be that high is supported by sales figure from travel agencies which are higher compared to the previous winter season, by between 10 and 30 percent. This shows that there will be an increase in the number of Croatian skiers going to European ski resorts. “Skiers who will leave Croatia this weekend to go skiing abroad do not need to worry about weather conditions, since forecast shows that all popular ski resorts will have enough snow for them”, said Ivan Pukšar, director of Kompas Travel Agency from Zagreb.
This season, Kompas has sold 11 percent ski packages more than last season. As usual, the demand is highest in Zagreb, and the only change is that Austrian resorts are often being replaced by Italian destinations, which Pukšar attributes to somewhat lower prices in Italy. Slovenia is also very popular. These three countries are traditional ski destinations for travellers from Croatia.
“Regardless of the weather forecast, which is now actually better for skiing, because all the most popular ski resorts expect snow during the weekend, all Croats going there should have no worries because, if needed, all resorts have snowmaking facilities which can produce enough snow”, said Nikolina Frklić, head of communications for Atlas Travel Agency. Travel agencies point out that prices for this season are more or less similar to last year.
