April the 12th, 2025 – Croatian tourism numbers have been less than some expected for the month of March 2025, for both overnights stays and arrivals.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, according to data from the eVisitor system on the Croatian National Tourist Board’s (HTZ) website, Croatian tourism performed more poorly in March. It ended 2025’s third month with 19.7 percent fewer tourist arrivals than during the same month last year. The total number of arrivals in Croatia amounted to 445.7 thousand, who achieved a little over 1.1 million overnight stays, equal to 22.6 percent less.
This also reduced the results for the entire first three months, as well as the pluses in physical tourist traffic for the first two months. For Croatian tourism, this weaker March can be partly attributed to the fact that last year Easter was at the end of March, while this year it is falls quite far into April.
The overall results for Croatian tourism March and the first three months of this year are mostly the result of significantly fewer arrivals and overnight stays of foreign tourists than last year. In March this year, 268.4 thousand of them arrived, achieving 778.3 thousand overnight stays, which is about 30 percent less than March 2024. Looking at the first three months as a whole, with 571.5 thousand arrivals and 1.7 million overnight stays, foreign visits to Croatia are down by 16.5 and 15.6 percent, respectively.
Domestic tourists and overnight stays, unlike those realised by foreign nationals, were higher than last year. In March this year, there were 4 percent more or 177.2 thousand recorded, with 381 thousand overnight stays realised, representative of 0.4 percent more. Over the entire first three months of 2025, with 463.2 thousand arrivals and 999.2 thousand overnight stays realised, the figures are up 6.6 and 3.3 percent compared to the same period last year.
Among the types of accommodation stayed in, the majority of overnight stays in the first three months or 92.4 percent were achieved in commercial accommodation facilities. Non-commercial units accounted for 7 percent, and nautical tourism accounted for less than 1 percent.
In numbers, this means that there were a total of 2.5 million overnight stays realised in commercial accommodation, which is 9.5 percent less than in the first three months of last year. Of that, most of these overnight stays were realised in hotels. The total sum amounted to 1.5 million overnight stays, which is a minus of 10.2 percent.
With a share of 22.7 percent in commercial overnight stays, household facilities follow. That being said, they also had almost 4 percent fewer overnight stays in the first three months of this year. They recorded 622.7 thousand overnight stays, as with all other commercial facilities.
A drop of almost 8 percent, with 194 thousand registered overnight stays, was also seen in non-commercial accommodation. In nautical tourism, given that we’re still in the low season for that segment, overnight stays in the first three months of this year were around 13 thousand or 32 percent fewer than in the same months last year.
