Vir Becomes Record Holder: Dalmatian Island Skyrockets in Popularity

Lauren Simmonds

As Novac writes on the 12th of November, 2019, there have never been better figures for the tourist season for the island of Vir. With 127,085 overnight stays realised in October alone, it outshone many other destinations across the country.

The total tourist turnover in overnight stays in the period from January the 1st to the end of October saw the island of Vir acheive 2,587,930 overnight stays in total, finishing in seventh place in the list of Croatia’s top 10 destinations for 2019.

Dubrovnik achieved better results in October with the figure of 407,722, Zagreb with 234,703 and Split with 181,058. Zadar, Rovinj, Opatija, Poreč, Labin and Konavle remain behind Vir, Croatia’s new record holder, writes Zadarski list.

Vir is also the new Croatian record holder in another statistical segment of tourist traffic monitoring, which is overnight stays realised in non-commercial accommodation, and the figures for that in October amounted to 125,216. In the same categories, Vir is the ”traditional champion” of Croatian tourism in terms of the total figures realised so far in 2019.

The figures for October also show something else – that 98.5 percent of the tourist traffic on this island during the aforementioned period was achieved on the basis of individual traffic, which indicates an increasing number of ”weekenders” and property owners during the post-season on the island.

In terms of sporting events, the favourable weather in October brought 127,285 overnight stays to Vir, an increase of 25.1 percent, of which 83.3 percent was generated by Croatian guests. When looking at the picture of foreign arrivals, Slovenians realised the most overnight stays, while the highest growth was recorded by guests from Germany. In addition to the Slovenians and the Germans, Austrian, Slovakian and Czech passport holders also recorded solid figures in October.

With regard to the total data so far, out of 2,587,930 overnight stays realised on Vir since the beginning of the year, 1,435,520 overnight stays were realised by domestic tourists, ie 55.5 percent of them, and 1,152,410 were realised by foreign guests, which is 44.5 percent, with total growth of four percent. The highest number of overnight stays was recorded by Slovenian citizens with 295,345 such stays acheived, followed by Germans with 223,415, followed then by Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, Austrians, Poles, Bosnians, Swedes and Swiss citizens.

These figures have further strengthened Vir’s position, not only on the list which showcases Croatia’s top 10 national destination elite, but in a general touristic sense. This positive trend has also been confirmed by the higher number of tourist arrivals in general, which was expressed in October by significant growth of 16.4 percent.

In October, 458,710 overnight stays realised by tourists were recorded at the level of Zadar County as a whole, making it the fifth Croatian county in tourist terms behind Split-Dalmatia, Dubrovnik-Neretva, Istria and Kvarner.

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