2017 is off to a good start…
According to preliminary data from the system eVisitor which includes tourist traffic realized in commercial and non-commercial segments in Croatia, during the month of January, 178,000 arrivals and 492,000 overnight stays were recorded. From these numbers, tourist traffic has grown 17% in arrivals and 18% in overnight stays, reports HRTurizam on February 1, 2017.
Of the total number of arrivals and overnight stays, foreign tourists accounted for 102,000 arrivals (up 20%) and 291,000 overnights (up 26%), while domestic tourists accounted for 76,000 arrivals (up 13%) and 202,000 overnight stays (up 8%).
Looking at the markets in January, most overnights were made by domestic tourists and tourists from Bosnia and Herzegovina (39,000 overnight stays), Italy (36,000 overnight stays), Slovenia (27,000 overnight stays), Austria (26,000 overnight stays) and Germany (22,000 overnight stays). Most overnights were realized in the city of Zagreb (96,000 overnight stays), Istria (88,000 overnight stays), Kvarner (78,000 overnight stays) and Split-Dalmatia County (47,000 overnight stays). When analyzing traffic by destination, the best results were achieved in Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Opatija, Rovinj and Split.
Tourism Minister Gari Cappelli announced the successful preseason while noting good results in bookings, as well as expanding the offer of tour operators in Croatia.
“There have been excellent results in the month of January following the announcement of new air lines, as well as increasing the frequency of existing lines. We enjoy the good results achieved in the domestic market, but also the results from distant markets like the US and Korea that are in the top 10 markets in the month of January. All of this is only further proof that we are very popular as a tourist destination, especially to distant markets where there is great potential and where we have a lot of work still to do,” said Minister Cappelli.
Director of HTZ Ratomir Ivičić even commented on the good results in January, while announcing that it is much easier now to monitor tourist flows. He said that during the year 2017, thanks to eVisitor, we can perform detailed comparisons with tourist turnover achieved during 2016.
“The eVisitor system was introduced at the beginning of last year that we defined as a zero year, or the year during which we filled the database. This phase is completed and we now have a highly efficient system that will give us a record of tourist traffic to define our activities. In fact, we can see that during the month of January this year, most tourists stayed in hotels, and in addition, we can see the total tourist traffic segmented by age, gender and the organization of arrival. This gives us all kinds of opportunities for analysis, and thus enables us to define more precise actions,” concluded Ivičić.
