March the 28th, 2025 – How much does Croatian tourism actually contribute to GDP? The myth that the figure is as high as 20% has been blown by figures from 2022.
As Jutarnji list/Marija Crnjak writes, the direct share of tourism in Croatia’s GDP stands at 11.32 percent, not 20 percent as is often communicated in public. These figures were released by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) this week. The share of all activities that also fall into the field of tourism, such as transport or trade, does stand at 24.5 percent. This however also includes when a someone you know from Karlovac comes to Zagreb for a drink by train, buys you a doughnut at a bakery and pays you for a round.
These figures refer to 2022 and are still displayed in kuna, but the shares in the total economy are very similar to previous editions for 2019 and 2016.
As stated in the Central Bureau of Statistics publication, the gross added value of Croatian tourism activities in 2022 amounted to 104 billion kuna. That is 24.53 percent of the total gross added value achieved in 2022. After calculating the tourism share in production for each of the tourism and other activities, the direct gross value added of tourism was calculated. In 2022, it amounted to 44.7 billion kuna and accounted for 10.54 percent of the total gross value added.
If we’re looking at Croatian tourism and its direct effect on GDP back in 2022, then it amounted to 57.7 billion kuna. That makes the total share of Croatian tourism in GDP 11.32 percent.
This is data from the so-called Tourism Satellite Account, a calculation that serves to estimate the direct economic contribution of Croatian tourism to GDP and the national economy as a whole. The most important results derived from the tourism satellite account have been presented. Those are the values of internal tourism consumption, inbound tourism expenditure, domestic tourism expenditure, the gross value added of tourism activities, the direct gross value added of tourism and finally, the direct gross domestic product of tourism in 2022.
For comparison, the share of all Croatian tourism activities in GDP 6 years ago did indeed stand at 24.41 percent, while direct Croatian tourism accounted for 11.82 percent of GDP.
The figures showing the share of Croatian tourism in GDP are very similar to those from previous editions of the Satellite Accounts. The CBS publishes it every three years using the internationally recognised and currently most objective methodology introduced in Croatia by the Institute for Tourism. Damir Krešić, the institute’s director revealed more.
“I’d like to remind people that tourism doesn’t exist as a separate special activity, and therefore it’s very difficult to obtain the exact data. That means that all of these figures should be taken with a grain of salt. That being said, this method is still the best that we have. The total gross added value of tourism thus includes tourism activities that are also generated by domestic consumption, or non-tourist consumption. That includes both transport and trade. Let’s say you have a guest coming from Karlovac or even Samobor, they created tourist consumption when they visited you and spent some money in Zagreb,” explained Damir Krešić.
The figures show that domestic tourism spending in 2022 amounted to 115 billion kuna, of which other components of spending amounted to 2.3 billion kuna. That is equal to 2.02 percent of domestic tourism spending. Croatian tourism expenditure back in 2022 amounted to almost 113 billion kuna, which is 97.98 percent of domestic tourism spending.
Inbound tourism expenditure accounted for 87.59 percent (99 billion kuna) of domestic tourism expenditure, while domestic tourism expenditure accounted for 12.41 percent (14 billion kuna) of domestic tourism expenditure.
It is also estimated that tourism expenditure by non-resident tourists, visitors who spent at least one night in Croatia, amounted to 93 billion kuna. That accounts for 94.02 percent of inbound tourism expenditure. Tourism expenditures by non-resident same-day visitors (excursions) amounted to almost 6 billion kuna, which is 5.98 percent of incoming tourism expenditures, according to the CBS.
