Tourism trends in Hvar Town are changing, with perhaps some surprising large increases in just two years.
Tourism is an ever-changing phenomenon, and nowhere is that more true than in Hvar Town, one of Croatia’s premier destiantions, as statistics compiled on February 4, 2016 show.
Hvar of course is the birthplace of organised tourism in Europe with the founding of the Hvar Health Society in 1868, when the rich and famous would come to the ‘Austrian Madeira’ to take advantage of its temperate winter climate to convalesce.
Fast forward 148 years, and the concept of winter tourism is but a distant memory. Now the focus is on the summer season, which is gradually extending beyond the peak summer months of July and August to late March until the end of October.
And the tourist makeup is changing considerably too, as this compilation of official statistics shows (many thanks to Sinisa Sime Matkovic-Mikulcic).
The largest number of visitors are the Brits and Americans, but both have shown an impressive almost 50% growth in just two years. Those large increases are dwarfed by the almost doubling of tourists from China and Taiwan (so the statistics are compiled in Croatia), now the third biggest group visiting Hvar Town.
Traditional markets such as Germany and Italy have declined somewhat, but there are other emerging markets taking their place, particularly Brazil, which has shown steady growth since 2010, and an almost 40% rise in the last two years alone.
