November the 15th, 2024 – Fantastic news for tourism as Croatian airport traffic continues to beat pre-pandemic records. The only one to record a minus was Rijeka, while Zadar has shone.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Brnic writes, Croatian airport traffic is shining, and this year, they’ll achieve record results. According to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), almost the same number of passengers passed through Croatia’s airports in the first nine months of 2024 as in the entire record-breaking year of 2019. During that pre-pandemic year, 11.38 million people passed through nine airports. In the first three quarters of 2024, 11.14 million passengers passed through the country’s airports.
Excellent good trends also stand out when looking at the current data on the annual increase of 15%. That same increase in the number of passengers has been recorded by state statisticians in all of the country’s major airports. The only unfortunate exception is that of Rijeka Airport. Zadar Airport, on the other hand, made the absolute biggest step forward, exceeding its previous record passenger traffic figure from 2023.
record croatian airport traffic sees two airports with three million passengers
In the first nine months of 2024, a total of 1.49 million passengers passed through Zadar Airport. Throughout the whole of 2023, there were about 1.2 million people recorded. The incredible growth at Zadar Airport has been shown by the fact that in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, when the best result was recorded in other domestic airports, a total of 782,000 passengers passed through that airport.
Investments and plans to expand the airport’s capacities make it possible to expect passenger traffic will increase in the coming years as well.
zagreb airport also stands out among the crowd
The highest Croatian airport traffic in the first three quarters of this year took place at Zagreb Airport. An impressive 3.25 million passengers passed through. Split Airport also did well with 3.18 million passengers in total. Down south, Dubrovnik Airport also recorded an excellent increase, as 2.56 million passengers passed through, representative of about 22% more than one year earlier.
rijeka airport records a drop in traffic
Rijeka Airport, on the other hand, saw lower passenger traffic. This isn’t exactly new, and it has been going on for some time now. In the first nine months of 2024, slightly less than 134,000 passengers passed through the airport, which is about 8% less than last year, when a negative trend was also recorded.
This airport has recently been in the focus mainly due to questionable management decisions regarding the enormous increase in parking prices. Parking prices at Rijeka Airport rose by a staggering 1000% in some cases. That, coupled with the alleged payment of a “reward” to the director, which was disputed by the Commission for deciding on a conflict of interest, painted Rijeka Airport in a less than favourable light. It has to be noted that the cause of this decrease in the number of passengers through the airport wasn’t the subject of any known discussions.
The fact is that it is an airport that covers a tourist area that isn’t typically an air destination. Despite that, the same issue failed to affect the great traffic at Pula Airport, which is also in an area where tourists tend to come by car and bus. In the first nine months of 2024, the number of passengers passing through Pula Airport increased by more than 20%, rising to almost half a million.
