While many high-reputation magazines regularly praise Croatia as a top destination, this summer, the season will be only as strong as the health situation regarding coronavirus – both in Croatia and abroad, from where the country welcomes as many tourists as possible. Sadly, as Croatian National Radiotelevision (HRT) reports, due to the bad pandemic situation, many European countries, including Croatia, are canceling the travel season.
While, as we reported on TCN, many flights are returning and coming to Croatia, the measures are possibly demotivating travelers.
HRT says Croatia is declared as a highly-risked country in Germany, and returning citizens need to show a negative test that is no older than 48 hours which is a change to previous arrangments when Germans could test after returning home.
„The English planned to allow traveling from May 17 but tour operators and others don’t have a big number of reservations to make it profitable so everything is postponed until June 24“, said hotelier Domagoj Tomasović to HRT.
British tourists were indeed expected mid-May, but as Darija Reić, director of the Croatian Tourist Board in London, said on the “Good Morning Croatia show” on HRT, there are still fines for non-essential travel.
„Travelling outside of UK is still illegal if you don’t travel for essential reasons which include traveling for business, education or medicinal purposes. Otherwise, it’s possible to be fined 5000 pounds“, explained Reić, as noted by Turizmoteka.
Tonči Glavina, state secretary for Tourism ministry, said for HRT that the UK is not alone in sending a message to its citizens to not travel anywhere and went on to say that may not be bad for Croatia.
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While the UK stands better in the percentage of vaccinated people than Croatia, Croatians are focusing on reaching the green zone by the end of May. Seventy thousand vaccinated workers in the tourist sector are the goal for the country.
„If that doesn’t happen until the start of the season, then we need tests and it would be good if tourist board make testing zones and if we co-finance the expenses of testing to our guests“, concluded Tomasović.
The Ministry of Tourism already secured 20 million kuna to co-finance testing for tourists if Croatia doesn’t reach the green zone.
PCR tests currently cost 500 kuna; quick antigen test is 150 kuna, and the translations of the results to English is 125 kuna. Twenty tourists were already tested in Zagreb on Tuesday.
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