Bravo, Vir!
The largest number of overnights spent by foreign tourists were realised by Slovenes, Germans, and Hungarians. Tourists from neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina, Czechoslovakia, and Austria have also been in considerably high numbers.
As Lokalni writes on the 20th of July, 2018, Vir has seen 66.8 percent more overnight stays realised from January to July this year, coupled with a massive 57.6 percent more arrivals compared to last year, making Vir the Croatian record holder when it comes to the increasing of tourist traffic.
In the first six ”tourist” months on the island this year, there were 359,897 tourists present, a considerable jump when compared to last year’s 215,759, while tourist arrivals amounted to 29,977 guests, which is another leap in comparison to last year’s 19,019.
The stunning island of Vir is already in the national top twenty right in the middle of the year, a title which has given the island a boost and a spring in its step just in time for the strongest tourist month that will surely bring it back into the top ten.
These semi-annual figures also confirmed the trend that has been being observed since the beginning of 2018, which involves equalising the increase in the number of overnight stays and the number of arrivals, in the past few years, overnight stay figures have typically been much higher than arrival figures. The Municipality of Vir pointed out that by the end of August last year, a record increase of 1.3 million overnight stays was recorded, a huge 72.4 percent more than there were back in 2016, but alongside just 103,000 tourist arrivals, which marked a mere 17.1 percent increase when compared to the same time of year one year previously.
More and more tourists are now discovering and coming to Vir, with a impressive average of overnight stays.
Domestic tourists made up 202,974 overnight stays, or 56.4 percent. Foreign tourists from over 70 countries across the world realised 156,923 overnight stays, or 43.6 percent. Foreigners are still stronger than domestic tourists when it comes to Vir’s arrivals, as from January to June, Vir recorded 17,075 foreign guests arrivals, which is 56.9 percent of the total number of arrivals, while domestic tourists realised 12,902 – 43.1 percent.
It’s also worth mentioning that when it comes to Zadar County’s tourist traffic, from January to June thos year, 2.6 million overnights were realised, and Vir’s share in this traffic stood at 13.8 percent.
The highest number of overnight stays among foreign tourists were realised by Slovenes (47,523/30.3 percent) Germans (30.684/19.6 percent), Hungarians (19.359/12.3 percent), Bosnia and Heregovina (14,396/9.2 percent), the Czech Republic (11,700/7.5 percent), Austrians (9,064/5.8 percent), Poland (7,989/5.1 percent), Slovakians (6,395/4.1 percent), Swedes (1,858/1.2 percent) and Swiss (1,485/0.9 percent).
Looking simply at the growth in the category of overnight stays, it should be noted that foreigners easily surpass domestic guests because in the first six months of 2018, the number of overnight stays for domestic guests increased by 62.5 percent when compared to last year.
In 2018, 202,974 Croats spent overnight stays on Vir compared to last year’s 124,911, while foreign tourists increased their overnight stays by 72.7 percent, with 156,923 overnight stays compared to last year’s 90,848.
With a more than impressive 275,996 realised overnight stays in June this year, Vir is the most successful destination in Zadar County and 11th in the whole of the Republic of Croatia, with only 4,000 overnight stays less than the current national number 10, Novalja.
eVisitor’s statistics for the month of June ranked Zadar at 16th place (232,162 overnight stays), Nin at 19th (210,515), Biograd at 32nd (146,242), Pag at 35th (123,292) and Pakoštane at 45th place (95,608) of the national top 50 for June.
The statistics for average overnight stays in the elite group are as follows: Tar (5.96), Vrsar (5.62), Funtana (5.54), Novalja (5.48), Mali Lošinj (5.32), Krk (5.10) Poreč (4.72), Rovinj (4.54), Crikvenica (4.12), Pula (3.99), Umag (3, 10), Medulin (5.04), Labin (4.97) 85), Šibenik (3.59), Dubrovnik (3.10), Opatija (2.69), Zadar (2.65), Split (2.56) and Zagreb (1.83).
