Just a few years ago, at the height of the crazy party tourism insanity – a time when Hvar made a list of the top 7 bachelor party destinations in Europe – it seemed that the damage of Croatia’s premier island might be tarnished forever.
What should have been a higher quality holiday experience based on natural beeauty, sun, culture and gastronomy gave way to a party story making headlines for all the wrong reasons.
And then something happened (and perhaps the pandemic helped a little).
A new direction for Hvar Town with a focus on higher quality tourism came into being. And slowly, but very surely, the results are being felt, as I wrote a few months ago in Peak Season Hvar Town 2021: a Destination Returning to High Quality.
And the new direction was noticed. Last week, Hvar was voted the Best Island in Europe at the annual Conde Nast Traveler Readers Awards the second time in three years, having also won the award in 2019.
I have noticed Hvar appearing in a lot more lists this year related to quality tourism. I am not a fan of these lists, as most are clickbait and few have any substance behind them, but one that came out this week offers an interesting snapshot of Hvar’s directional change, and it comes with a plausible meethodology.
Europe’s Most Tranquil Escapes by OVO Network, had lots of good news for those looking for a more relaxed Hvar experience, as it once was.
Our research also shows that the best seafront location in Europe for tranquility is Hvar, a charming island in Croatia right on the Adriatic Sea. Hvar offers better access to hotels than any other area in the study and has the fewest people per km2.
(Source www.ovonetwork.com)
Of course, one can find tranquil destinations far from the sea, but Hvar scored very well here too, coming third in Europe overall.
About the methodology:
OVO Network set out to discover which European cities offer the most tranquil surroundings for holiday goers.
In order to put this together OVO Network analysed a wide range of data sources including:
- Google Maps API to collect the number of spas and hotels within a locality
- Google Keyword Planner to get search popularity and trends data over the past few years
- Air Quality to estimate how untouched by tourism a locality is
- Density of people per km2 which was calculated by taking the population and dividing it by the size of the relevant city or area
Once all the metrics were collected, a ranking system was put together in order to score these cities and an overall ranking column was created to rank from the best to the worst performer.
Interestingly, one of the areas were Hvar was marked down was its relative lack of spas per capita. A situation that one may assume will be rectified once the transformation from party image to best tranquil destination by the sea is complete.
Learn more about Hvar in the TC Hvar guide.
You can see the complete list here.
