The most important event in the Dubrovnik calendar takes part this year, and – don’t tell anyone – this is the very best time of year to visit the Pearl of the Adriatic. The Feast of St Blaise, the much-beloved patron saint of Dubrovnik, is an extraordinary event when the UNESCO World Heritage Site, stripped back to its bare stone with most cafes and restaurants closed, comes to life and is packed once more. But not with tourists, but with locals, emerging from the winter hibernation to celebrate this most important of days. If you have never been, I rate it as one of the top 10 experiences of my 20 years in Croatia – you can read more in Dubrovnik Full of Life as St Blaise Celebrated in Style.
Want to come and enjoy the festivities, or chill in Dubrovnik in the off-season? Good luck, unless you live in Zagreb.
After a week working in Montenegro last week, I got to see the realities of tourism and connectivity in January.
It was a little sobering when I saw the Dubrovnik timetable, a European tourism champion and iconic city which could – and should – be a 12-month destination.
Above is the timetable for the next few days, including those magical St. Blaise festivities. Apart from one flight to London, Zagreb is petty much the only choice.
And even those flights to Zagreb are crazy expensive – despite the fact that they are subsidised with the PSO (Public Service Obligation) scheme.
Here are your one-way options from Dubrovnik to Zagreb a week from now, for example.
I have spent the last week on Lustica, the lovely and almost totally unspoiled peninsula south of Tivat in Montenegro. I flew in and out of Dubrovnik, and I was struck by how poorly serviced Dubrovnik is in the winter, and how the rise of Tivat from nothing has made it arguably a more interesting destination in winter – certainly livelier – than the Pearl of the Adriatic itself. Here is what I wrote:
Croatian tourism tragedies in road signs and airport departures. 25 years ago, Tivat was a coastal backwater on the Montenegrin coast. Today, even though it is 3 times smaller than a nearer town to Dubrovnik (Herceg Novi), it has its very own sign as you leave Dubrovnik Airport. Porto Montenegro was supposed to have been built in Croatia, but someone got greedy and Tivat became its home. Today, there are 3 luxury resorts with investment totalling 2.5 billion euro in the Boka region of Montenegro, with many other large developments. By contrast, the largest hotel investment on the Croatian coast in today’s money is Haludovo on Krk, a joint venture between Tito and Penthouse in 1971 (and now a ruin for over 30 years) at a paltry 250 million. Not only is the luxury tourism going across the southern border, but so are the locals for entertainment in winter. And flights. Tivat Airport connects to the world 12 months a year, while Dubrovnik is serviced by almost exclusively domestic routes this winter (see timetable in photo). On the positive side in the Kingdom of Accidental Tourism, the sun is shining, and soon the tourists will just come.
Tivat’s daily schedule – windows to Belgrade and Istanbul, which are both outstanding destinations in their own right but are also windows to the world with the global network of Turkish Airlines and the rapidly expanding network of Air Serbia. Tivat to the world in 100 different combinations, four times a day. And the world to Boka Bay.
And the prices aren’t bad compared to those singles with Croatia Airlines (flights February 8-13 – a return not single):
I asked legendary tourism consultant, Mario Seric, for his opinion. The first sentence shows the benefits of being connected to Belgrade, as well as Zagreb, whose connectivity pales by comparison.
Air Serbia will be offering direct flights to 93 cities /destinations worldwide, of which 62 are direct, scheduled, and year-round, 16 direct scheduled seasonal, and 15 direct charter seasonal!
This is impressive compared to the poor connections being offered by Croatia Airlines from Zagreb with direct flights to only 21 destinations (16 year-round and 5 seasonal).
So these connections with Belgrade can also be great to access other destinations as well, especially those that are far away because Belgrade has direct flights to New York, and as of this year also to Chicago and Tianjin…
Air Serbia is currently also considering the introduction of direct flights to Toronto, Miami, Bangkok, and Beijing.
And the good thing in this is that all these flights can be operated by smaller airlines that do not consume a lot of fuel. Turboprop airlines are perfect for intraregional connectivity, and you have a lot of great examples in Europe for this.
Thanks, Mario. And to connect all that network to one of Europe’s top destinations, so that tourists could enjoy it out of season, as well as allowing locals to travel with ease, would it really be so hard to connect Belgrade to Dubrovnik 12 months a year? After all, if it is clearly working for tiny Tivat next door, surely it would work for a tourism giant like Dubrovnik. Worth the small investment to try?
Of course, I can understand that there might be some objections in certain quarters given recent history of the connection between Belgrade and Dubrovnik, but the Croatian tourism chiefs decided to move on from the recent past in 2011 by being the main tourism sponsor at the regionally significant Belgrade Tourism Fair back in 2011.
Dubrovnik to the world, 12 months a year. It could – and should – be closer and more realisable than one might think.
****
What is it like to live in Croatia? An expat for 20 years, you can follow my series, 20 Ways Croatia Changed Me in 20 Years, starting at the beginning – Business and Dalmatia.
Follow Paul Bradbury on LinkedIn.
Subscribe to the Paul Bradbury Croatia & Balkan Expert YouTube channel.
Croatia, a Survival Kit for Foreigners is now available on Amazon in paperback and on Kindle.
