April the 19th, 2025 – The competitiveness of Croatian tourism is being risked more and more by greed. The faithful Germans no longer even have Croatia on their top 5 summer break destination list.
As Kult Plave Kamenice writes, “The competitiveness of Croatian tourism has been put at risk as a result of high prices. Therefore, guests are choosing other Mediterranean destinations or reducing their spending,” said Boris Vujčić, governor of the Croatian National Bank, back in February. A recent survey conducted in Germany on a sample of 3,000 people painfully confirmed Vujčić’s words of warning.
The claim that competitiveness within Croatian tourism is a pressing issue is that the country failed to even make it into the top five destinations for German tourists to spend their summer holidays in 2025. Ahead of Croatia are Spain, Turkey, Egypt, Greece and Portugal. It’s particularly significant to note that in 2024, which wasn’t a particularly brilliant year for tourism, 3.3 million German guests still visited Croatia, while 2.2 million Germans travelled to Portugal and 1.6 million went to Egypt.
Croatia has therefore been overtaken by countries that used to lag far behind it last year as a desirable destination on the German tourist market.
Given the importance of German guests in the overall Croatian tourism balance, it seems that this tourist year will be even worse than 2024 was. The announcements for May and June are quite good, but the busiest months of July and August, when the most money should be made, remain completely uncertain. The causes of Croatian tourism stagnation and decline over the last three years are crystal clear. First and foremost, after an excellent 2022, prices have absolutely exploded. The quality offered, however, hasn’t followed, particularly not in gastronomy.
Secondly, Croatia doesn’t really have any relevant tourism strategy outside of obsessively counting eVisitor numbers each summer while placating the masses with talk of sustainability. The document adopted by the government under that name is mostly a set of bureaucratic phrases, very many incorrectly defined goals and a completely ignorant attitude towards gastronomy and wine.
It remains to be seen whether the catering and hospitality companies located along the coastline are able to adapt to the smaller number of guests and the risk of even lower consumption than last year. Perhaps, on the contrary, they are already busy printing new menus and wine lists with even higher prices than last year. The second option is completely self-destructive and will see the competitiveness of Croatian tourism be put at risk potentially permanently.
