ZAGREB, July 23, 2018 – Growing tourist demand for Croatia and other Central European countries is an excellent opportunity for development and to create added value in the regional tourism industry, including through business cooperation with clients from all over the world who are expected to come to Zagreb next spring for the first Central European Tourism Summit (CETS), the event’s organiser Lu Buchanan told Hina in an interview.
The event, promoted as the first large tourism B2B exchange in Central Europe, will take place at the Zagreb Fair on 7 and 8 May 2019, bringing together over 400 industry professionals from 30 countries.
Its purpose is to show clients from the world over what the tourism industry in Croatia and Central Europe offers now and its future potential. The diversity of natural beauties and resources plays an important part and the increasing quality of services in the last few years is creating new business opportunities in which service providers can generate greater profits, Buchanan said.
The project has already been joined by many local and international tourism companies and institutions such as the Croatian National Tourism Board, the City of Zagreb Tourism Board, Croatia Airlines, Turkish Airlines, the tourism boards of Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, many Croatian tourism companies and others.
The CETS Zagreb will encompass almost all segments of the tourist trade, including adventure, sport, business and culture tourism, golf, recreation, yachting, gastronomy and others that are interesting to professional clients from the world and the region. In addition, participants will be able to hear about new trends, obtain business advice and attend the presentation of the first Central European Tourism Awards, Buchanan said.
The show is being organised by her Spanish-based company, Cent Euro Fairs SL, which has been organising business tourism events in growing markets for 25 years.
Buchanan believes that the CETS Zagreb will help attract more foreign tourists to Croatia and this part of Europe through the direct effects of contracts for tourist visits from around the world, which are expected to be seen already in 2019.
The CETS Zagreb is also focused on bringing a large number of foreign tourists to the region by connecting key regional tourism entities with professionals from the most important foreign markets, especially from remote markets such as the United States, Australia, Arab and Asian countries, and elsewhere. Those markets, despite the growing tourism in Central Europe and the rising popularity of Croatia, still do not know much about countries in this region and their tourist trade, and we are trying to change this by bringing in clients from those markets and other markets in the world, Buchanan said.
In order to maximise the effects of the CETS Zagreb, it has been decided to shift the date of the event from the originally planned date in early December to the first half of May 2019. Buchanan says that December is a period of festive and Christmas atmosphere when business people lessen the intensity of their work. Furthermore, Zagreb is well known for one of the best Advent celebrations in Central Europe and beyond, which is why hotel bookings are made in advance.
We believe that there will be more vacant rooms in the hotels in May, and the springtime itself offers more opportunities for sightseeing in Zagreb and its environs, as well as in other parts of Croatia, which is also included in the CETS programme, Buchanan said.
She said she was fascinated by Zagreb and its atmosphere, its people and tourism services. With a revamped airport and new hotels, which will be opened this and next year, the city has all the conditions for organising this show, she added.
Buchanan believes that the whole of Croatia, both its Adriatic coast and its interior, have great opportunities for the development of tourism all year round. She says that this will definitely be facilitated by the huge success of the Croatian national football team at the World Cup in Russia this year and photographs of a homecoming party that was given for the team, which she described as a stunning and amazing experience.
