October the 18th, 2025 – The eastern Croatian county of Osijek-Baranja, once entirely overlooked and forgotten by Croatia’s tourism boom, is now finally enjoying considerable tourism growth.
As Glas Slavonije/Voice of Slavonia writes, according to eVisitor figures, Osijek-Baranja County is the leading Croatian region in terms of tourism growth. By all accounts, 2025 will turn out to be a truly record year, which is just a continuation of successful tourism growth for eastern Croatia that began the year before last and continued last year.
“In the first nine months of 2025, 17% more overnight stays were recorded than in the same period last year, with 14% more arrivals also registered than last year. This is the largest increase in overnight stays of all Croatian counties. What’s particularly pleasing is the fact that overnight stays of domestic (16%) and foreign guests (15%) are growing equally,” pointed out Mislav Matišić, Deputy Director of the Osijek-Baranja County Tourist Board, emphasising that the largest increase in guests is from Poland (29%) and neighbouring Hungary (18%).
He added that of the larger tourist boards, Bizovac (25%), Đakovo (17%), Osijek (13%) and Bilje (10%) have the largest increase in overnight stays, while smaller tourist boards are growing even more, including Belišće (102%), Erdut (54%) and Draž (34%). He revealed that the increase in the number of overnight stays in areas without a tourist office is extremely significant. Such areas (looking at the situation in terms of overnight stays) are immediately behind the City of Osijek itself (134,000), followed by Đakovo (21,600), Baranja (17,800), Bilje (11,000), Našice (10,600) and Bizovac (9,800).
“This year, we’ve had as many as four months with the magic number of 30,000 overnight stays exceeded. These are May, June, July and September, with May being a record-breaking month with 34,000 overnight stays recorded. Compared to last year, all of this year’s months thus far have been in the plus,” he said, concluding that there’s absolutely every right to be very optimistic when it comes to the future of Osijek-Baranja County and tourism growth. There’s also a strong and now realistic hope that this will be the first year with more than 300,000 overnight stays recorded across the previously entirely overlooked eastern plains of Croatia.
Osijek-Baranja’s impressive tourism growth is the result of the hard work and investment of all tourism stakeholders in the region. The whole story goes from investing in the development of new products and promotion on domestic and foreign markets, to opening all sorts of brand new accommodation facilities.
The director of the Baranja Tourist Board, Matej Perkušić stated that there’s no real seasonality in Baranja like there is elsewhere across the country, particularly along the coast and on the islands, although some months stand out somewhat more than others. There has been an entire series of Baranja tourist events that attract domestic and foreign guests year-round, as well as the relatively frequent opening of new accommodation facilities.
The Baranja ‘‘tourist cake’’ is therefore divided into three parts, the Baranja Tourist Board, the Bilje-Kopački rit Municipality Tourist Board and the Draž Municipality Tourist Board, meaning that the individual figures may be somewhat weaker compared to other (larger) tourist boards in the county, but their addition shows that Baranja as a whole is rightly included among the leading continental Croatian tourist destinations.
Over the entire first nine months of this year, 17,500 tourists were registered as staying in the wider area between the Danube, Drava and the Hungarian border (whereas there were 16,500 last year), and 31,400 overnight stays were also recorded (up from 30,500 last year).
