Visitor numbers for the first half of 2011 revealed

Recently revealed statistics for the first six months of the year show show visitor numbers to Croatia and the number of nights that they stayed for, as well as showing some surprising increases in the nationalities of these visitors.

Overall, 3,228,401 tourists came to Croatia in the first half of 2011, which is an increase of 11% on the same period last year. Of this number, 518,776 were domestic tourists – up 6% on 2010, which is a decent upturn after some wobbles for this particular group. The number of foreign tourists visiting the country, meanwhile, rose by 12%.

In total, all tourists stayed for 13,717,095 nights in Croatia, up 12% on 2010. Of this figure, domestic tourists made up 1,672,520 nights, up 11% on the same period in the year before.

These stats also reveal some of the more unusual nationalities visiting Croatia – unusual in the sense that their visitor numbers overall are relatively low, but still growing! (And outside what is considered the “big five” of German, Austrian, Italian, Czech and Slovenian tourists.)

Between January and June of this year, Croatia was visited by 10% more Albanian visitors (6,760 visitors in total), 64% more Brazilians (7,184 visitors), 20% more Montenegrin visitors (4,535 visitors), 2% more Greek visitors (10,334), 22% more Indian visitors (1,522), 17% more Chinese visitors (8,178), 19% more Koreans, 57% more Portugese (8,927), 29% more Spaniards (55,096), 49% more Turkish visitors (13,889), 4% more Serbian visitors (25,405) and 33% more Americans (56,180).

What must no doubt be pleasing for Croatia is not only the increasing amounts of these visitors, but also increasing amounts of visitors from countries further afield (meaning, not the kind of travellers that can simply jump in a car and cross a border or two to get to Croatia) – and in what is off-season. (Although, yes, the period in question is up to the end of June meaning just before the start of peak season, the months of July and August.)

Turning to the more “traditional” visitors, the month of June saw 278,131 German visitors (up a whopping 65%); 169,179 Austrian visitors (up 15%); 121,172 Italians (up 15%); 169,765 Slovenians (up just 1%); and 106,448 Czech visitors (up 6%). Just outside that main contingent, still for the month of June, were 43,219 Hungarian visitors (up 14%); 22,685 Bosnian visitors (up 19%); 71,606 Polish visitors (up 14%); and 35,877 Russian visitors (up 15%).

Source: Vjesnik