November 7, 2019 – Ryanair could reopen their connection to Osijek, with plans to bring about five thousand passengers to Slavonia next year.
This was said on Tuesday at the WTM World Tourism Exchange in London after Croatian Tourist Board Director Kristjan Stanicic and Tourism Minister Gari Cappelli met with representatives of the low-cost airline, reports Novac.hr.
Namely, they discussed joint promotional projects that Ryanair would promote Croatian destinations and bring more guests to the airports to which it has flown so far, i.e., Pula, Zadar and Rijeka. Still, the minister made it clear to them that Croatia intends to develop the entire country equally in terms of tourism.
“We have made it clear to them that the policy of this Government is the development of the continent and that our wish is to connect the green and the blue. We told them that as the Government, we insisted on opening the line to Osijek at least four months a year. According to Ryanair, we will give a letter of intent to reflect on the quality of living in Croatia. It is not in our interest to have a peak season only in three or four destinations but to develop Croatia well. Stanicic will cooperate with his team in the next ten days and with Osijek Airport. The plan is to fly to Osijek from June to September and establish two to three flights. By the way, this company has brought 310,000 passengers to Croatia this year, they plan to reach 400,000 passengers, and their strongest base is Zadar.”
On the second day of the fair, they also met with the world’s largest tour operator – TUI.
“They brought 200,000 passengers to Croatia this year, and they plan to increase that number by 20,000. It will also increase the number of its charter flights,” Stanicic said.
“This increase in the number of passengers will, of course, require more Croatian workforce in the coming season. Cappelli has already announced that foreign labor import quotas will grow to 30,000 work permits. This year the quota amounted to 21,000 work permits. Cappelli also used his visit to the fair to animate his colleagues from other European countries to make stronger choices for financing tourism projects through European funds, especially since Croatia will take over the EU presidency at the beginning of the year.
We are talking about turning an initiative supported by 13 countries to express a wish for tourism to be in a better position during these six months of Croatia’s EU presidency. Spain has proposed setting up a committee on Transport and Tourism. The goal is that there is one committee to deal with tourism, since 10 percent of people in Europe work in tourism, and tourism accounts for a large share of the GDP of many countries. It is the third strongest industry in the world. We will demand that certain funds can finance projects in tourism, such as health tourism,” concluded Cappelli.
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