June the 3rd, 2025 – Croatian turnover for the month if May has been a mixed bag. It has seen increases in certain areas as we approach the main summer season, but in others, it has dropped.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Jadranka Dozan writes, the past extended weekend, which coincided with Croatia’s Statehood Day, had an adverse effect on the overall turnout in the second round of local elections, but the tourism and hospitality sector usually likes a national holiday to fall on a Friday.
Ahead of the extended weekend, Tourism Minister Tonči Glavina pointed out that the end of the month was expected to be marked by increased tourist traffic. He assessed the pre-season as being good overall. By the beginning of May, tourism was up a few percentage points compared to last year, with it being slightly down a few days before the end of the month.
croatian turnover in accommodation and restaurants differs
The first data from the Tax Administration on consumption measured by fiscalised turnover follows the minister’s assessment of increased tourist traffic at the end of the month. In the hospitality and accommodation services sectors, receipts worth over 644 million euros were paid by cards and cash last month, which is 37 million euros or six percent more than the same month last year.
However, it remains to be noted that the above increase is entirely the result of the growth in reported Croatian turnover of cafes, restaurants and other forms of food and beverage preparation and service (an increase in turnover from 407 to 449 million), while the May fiscal turnover of accommodation was slightly lower than last year.
Since the beginning of 2025, there has been an increase in turnover in the accommodation sector, although this has been significantly lower Croatian restaurant turnover has been. By the end of May, bills worth a total of 1.53 billion euros had passed through the fiscal coffers of businesses in the catering industry, which is 11.5 percent more than last year. Landlords providing accommodation services on the other hand reported 491 million euros in turnover, or six percent more than last year.
Speaking about the course of the tourist season, Glavina emphasised that the ministry is looking at the bigger picture. The first six months of 2025 will be an indicator of how well preparations were done. Then comes the main summer season and the post-season.
“Due to all the challenges, geopolitical and economic uncertainties, everyone would be very happy if the same figures as last year were repeated this year”, the minister said.
decreasing expectations for croatian turnover?
In terms of the pace of growth in total consumption, expectations are also gradually decreasing after a fairly long period of fairly high growth rates in personal consumption, as well as in investments. The data on fiscalisation are also on the same track, although the total of 16.4 billion euros of fiscalised turnover recorded by the end of May represents an increase of around 1.3 billion euros, or a solid 8.7 percent, in annual comparisons.
The state statisticians’ estimate of Croatian GDP growth in the first quarter of 2025, published last week, showed a relatively significant slowdown in real personal consumption growth – to just 1.7 percent, which is the weakest year-on-year growth in that component since the first quarter of 2021. However, the impact of the Easter holidays falling much late, and the consumer boycotts that took place during the first quarter, is visible here, according to Ivana Jović, chief economist at PBZ, in a review of the CBS estimate.
Recent data for the current quarter, she explained, suggests that the second quarter, given the “levelling out” of the postponed Easter, as well as the smaller real decline expected in tourism, will bring a recovery in personal consumption in the second quarter of the year. This is also supported by data on retail trade turnover in April (with an annual growth of 4.9 percent in real terms), as well as data from the Tax Administration, according to which the effect of increased Easter spending was reflected in a 12.4 percent nominal growth in retail trade invoices.
“According to fiscalisation data, May brought a continued growth in the amount of fiscalised retail receipts, by 4.6 percent in nominal terms. This would suggest an estimated real growth of around three percent, and this would raise the average real growth rate of consumption in the first two months of the second quarter to around 6 percent, compared to 1.6 in the first quarter,” explained Ivana Jović.
a slowdown for personal consumption
However, while the second quarter should show stronger growth in personal consumption than the first, analysts are more or less in agreement that personal consumption growth is generally slowing. Using the example of fiscalised bills and receipts, this is supported by the fact that the average growth in the amount of fiscalised invoices in retail trade over the first five months of this year was 5.8 percent. In the same period last year, it was 13.4 percent. In real terms, this means 3.7 compared to 9.9 percent, because the average inflation rate in the observed period last year was four percent, and this year it stands at 3.5 percent.
At the same time, data on fiscalised invoices in the accommodation sector indicate that after growth of 13.5 percent recorded in April (owing once again to the late Easter effect), the amount of receipts issued in May recorded a decrease of 2.3 percent, with their issue number also being 0.6 percent lower. In cafes, restaurants and other fiscalised entities in the food and beverage preparation and service sector, the 2.3 percent higher number of receipts issued also contributed to the double-digit nominal growth in turnover.
