Russian tourists are returning to Croatia…
During the second day of his official visit to Russia, Tourism Minister Gari Cappelli participated in a meeting of the Association of Croatian Travel Agencies and Russian travel agencies (ATOR). During the meeting, the Minister presented the current status of Croatian tourism in 2017, putting an emphasis on health tourism, the investment in the tourism sector, and the opening of 50 new and newly renovated hotels that will contribute to further strengthen the supply and services in Croatia, reports Poslovni.hr on March 15, 2017.
At the meeting with Russian tour operators, participants included the director of ATOR Maja Lomidze, and representatives of TUI Russia, Coral, Paks, and Russian Express, all of whom individually presented the current state of bookings and interest in Croatia for 2017.
Most tour operators announced that there has been an increase in early bookings from 20 to 35 percent for Croatia this year, and praised the excellent cooperation with the Croatian Tourist Board (HTZ) in Moscow. They also noted that one of the competitive advantages of Croatia is that it is a secure destination.
During the meeting, Minister Cappelli announced the new investments in Croatian tourism, pointing out that a special focus will be on the development of year-round tourism which will give stronger support to tour operators who bring guests to Croatia outside of the summer months.
“Croatia will invest just over 800 million euros in tourism this year which will contribute to further growth in quality and service in the tourism industry, and especially important is medical tourism which has great potential and is interesting to Russian tourists. In addition, we will develop tourist products so that they can be available all year round. We also need a stronger position at airports such as Rijeka and Zadar because these are areas where we have room for growth for Russian tourists,” said the Minister.
Tourists from Russia achieved 119,700 arrivals (+ 7%) and 879,100 overnight stays in 2016, which is at the level of results in 2015. Russian tourists stayed in hotels and private accommodations and visited Istria County (328,700), Split-Dalmatia County (192,000) and Primorje-Gorski Kotar County (102,000). The most popularly visited cities were Poreč, Umag, Dubrovnik, Rovinj and Opatija.
