April 12, 2020 – There are 13,500 tourists registered in Croatia for Easter this year, and most of them are on Vir Island.
Dnevnik.hr reports that thousands of tourists will still spend Easter in Dalmatia this year. While some are hiding from the coronavirus, others are stuck here and unable to get back home. Most tourists, however, are on Vir Island.
Namely, out of the 13,500 tourists registered across Croatia, there are currently 600 tourists on the still corona-free island.
Barbara and Atila arrived in Croatia a month ago and have been staying in a weekend house on the island of Vir instead of an apartment in Budapest.
“Everyone would like to come here now, of course, but they need to wait a little longer,” Atila says, adding that he followed the news and prepared his family to go to Croatia as soon as the pandemic appeared in China.
At a time when the coronavirus pandemic has taken over the world, Vir has become their haven.
“The tourists who found themselves on Vir at the time when the measures were announced are now sharing the fate of the corona crisis with us,” says Kristijan Kapović, Mayor of Vir Municipality.
Barbara from Hungary says she feels completely safe on Vir, too.
“I feel safer here than in Hungary because there are no infections on Vir,” says Barbara.
The Vir Crisis Headquarters says there are no infected people because they adhere to all the rules. However, a few days ago, the fishing rules were broken by two Czechs who, after a 20-hour search, were found on the high seas with high temperatures.
“The temperatures they had probably came from being outside all night. But no coronavirus was detected,” says Antonio Vucetic, Chief of Vir Municipality’s Civil Protection Headquarters.
Around 600 tourists, mostly ‘weekenders’, will welcome Easter on Vir.
“All of them are welcome, all of them are registered, and everyone who changes their place of residence for more than 24 hours belongs to the status of a tourist,” explains Srdjan Liveric, director of the Vir Tourist Board.
And not only Croats are among them.
“They are from central Europe, from those 700-800 kilometers around Vir. There are Slovenes, Hungarians, Slovaks, Poles, Czechs, Germans, Austrians, Bosnians, from the places that surround us. Vir is an auto destination,” says Kristijan Kapović, Mayor of Vir Municipality.
Currently, out of the 13,500 tourists in Croatia, 3,800 of them are from abroad. Thus, nearly 10,000 Croats are likely escaping the coronavirus in their weekend homes.
The least are registered in Dubrovnik-Neretva County, while in some counties, tourist numbers are rising despite the pandemic.
Zadar County ensured that it was a unique county in Croatia during this corona period. Specifically, in the corona-fueled March, and the first quarter of 2020, they recorded 5 percent more overnight stays than last year.
Vir is also convinced that this season will be an advantage for them, concluded Dnevnik.hr.
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