July 5, 2020 – There are currently 354,000 tourists in Croatia – and almost 40,000 tourists enter the country daily. The Tourist Board Directors of Istria and Split-Dalmatia County comment on the current situation.
Dalmacija Danas reports that most tourists in Croatia are in Istria, then Kvarner, while tourists in the south are still hard to come by, as they mostly arrive by air. But even that should change soon, given the larger number of airlines announced in July.
Joško Stella, director of the Split-Dalmatia County Tourist Board, and Denis Ivošević, director of the Istria Tourist Board, spoke about the situation in tourism.
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Ivošević said that Istria currently has about 100,000 guests, mostly Germans, Slovenes, Slovaks and Czechs. Forty percent of tourists are in private accommodation, 40 percent in camps and 20 percent in hotels.
Stella said that at the beginning of June in Split-Dalmatia County, the situation regarding tourism was horrible and that the number of tourists was 10 percent compared to last year.
“When we look at the first six months, we have a turnover of 19 percent compared to last year. That is 770 overnight stays compared to last year when we had 4 million,” he said, adding that already now, at the end of June, and at the beginning of July, exponential growth can be seen.
He emphasized that the introduction of new airlines is beginning and that the introduction of routes from Great Britain is especially important.
“According to current estimates, about 200,000 passengers are expected. That is not much compared to last year, which had 700,000 passengers, but it is a lot compared to June,” he pointed out.
Slovenia placed Croatia on the ‘yellow list’ of less safe countries. When asked whether this will affect the arrival of tourists and whether smaller bookings are already being recorded, Ivošević stated that bookings did not fall, but that it was the wrong message for Croatian tourism.
“I believe that after the elections, our Government will be in negotiations with Slovenia. I think it is important to emphasize that no tourist in our country was infected through local transmission, but all these were imported cases,” he said, adding that protocols against coronavirus in Istria work very well, so tourists can feel safe.
Stella pointed out that last year in the first six months in Split-Dalmatia County, there were one million overnight stays of guests from Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“They are as important to us as the guests from Slovenia. The markets of Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina accounted for over 50 percent of our turnover last year, so we took action to bring journalists and bloggers from those countries in cooperation with the Croatian National Tourist Board to show them that Croatia is a safe destination,” he said.
Ivošević said that our priority is to maintain a positive epidemiological situation because it is the largest promotional tool with which we can communicate that we are a safe destination.
“We hope that in July and August, we will reach a figure between 30 and 40 percent compared to the same period last year,” he stressed.
