Plitivice Lakes

Over 2 million visitors to Croatia’s national parks this year

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A couple of news reports yesterday revealed that Croatia’s wonderful national parks have been very popular with visitors so far this year. A grand total of 2.12 million people have visited the country’s eight national parks during the first nine months of the year. Of this, almost 90% were foreign visitors (1.82 million being the actual figure), with the remaining 300,000 being domestic visitors.

The stunning Plitvice Lakes National Park was far and away the most popular, receiving 1.01 million visitors of the total figure. The park reached the important one-millionth visitor milestone – for the first time ever – in late September this year, which is a fantastic achievement. Last year the park had hoped to reach the magical one million mark, although ending up receiving only a few tens of thousands of visitors less. Given that this was for the whole of 2010, this year the park certainly looks like it will have very healthy growth in its visitor numbers. With its truly mesmerising mix of lakes and waterfalls, increased interest in the park this year is no real surprise – and we’ve noticed that there’s been plenty of press coverage on Plitvice too! (Such as this article from the Daily Mail.)

Plitvice Lakes

The second most popular national park was Krka, which received 652,000 visitors during January to September this year. This too is no surprise and given its location (close to the coast, with easy connections from Sibenik) and wonderful features including its many waterfalls (such as Skradinski Buk, a series of seventeen waterfalls). Visitors to Krka can also bathe in its waters (unlike in Plitvice), which makes for an enjoyable experience.

After Plitvice and Krk, Brijuni National Park, off the Istrian coast, came in third with 143,000 visitors. Paklenica National Park, a joy for hikers and climbers, was in fourth position with 107,100 visitors, whilst the national park on the island Mljet was in fifth place with 93,000 visitors. Sixth was Kornati National Park which welcomed 82,400 visitors whilst in seventh and eight were the national parks of Risnjak and Northern Velebit which received 17,000 visitors each.

Sources: Vjesnik, HRT, Vjesnik

Dubrovnik

More on British visitors to Croatia – and the popularity of Dubrovnik

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Folllowing yesterday’s post in which we talked about the number of British visitors to Croatia this year, newspaper reports today further discuss Croatia’s popularity amongst Brit travellers, as news, statistics and quotes emerge from the World Travel Market event currently taking place in London.

What’s interesting to pick up from today’s press reports is that beyond Dubrovnik (and Dalmatia), other regions of Croatia are apparently far less popular with British visitors. Meri Matesic, head of the Croatian National Tourist Office in London was quoted by newspaper Novi List revealing the regional breakdown of British visitors to Croatia. She stated that around 60% travel to Dalmatia’s delights (aside from Dubrovnik there’s of course Split; the Makarska Riviera; and islands such as Hvar, Brac and Korcula to name just a few), with around 20% holidaying in Istria and the remaining 20% going to destinations around Zadar or on the Kvarner Riviera.

British visitors to Croatia - Dubrovnik
It’s all about Dubrovnik…sort of

The newspaper Vjesnik reports that Darko Ivic of the Istrian hotel group Plava Laguna (now known as Plava Laguna – do keep up, Vjesnik!) saying that British visitors account for only 3% of the nights stayed at their hotels. Mr Ivic states, “The British are not going to Istria, we lost them during the war. We are no longer able to get them [as visitors], the younger generation of Brits do not know about us.”

However, it seems Dubrovnik’s popularity amongst Brits may simply go from strength to strength. Currently making great efforts to position itself as a year-round destination, the city is being promoted with a campaign in which it is advertised as “A City For All Seasons”. (See this photo of a recent advert in a London newspaper, and this photo of an advert we saw on the side of a London bus!) Vjesnik reports that 13 hotels are to remain open in Dubrovnik during winter, and of course regular, direct flights from the UK (there are four flights per week from London Gatwick to Dubrovnik with British Airways) mean the city is easy to reach, even just for short break.

The final point of interest to pick up from today’s reports is that Ms Matesic states that Ryanair brought 12,000 passengers to Rijeka Airport with its twice-weekly flights from London Stansted this year, which she says is a good result. Given that direct flights to Rijeka Airport from the UK were reintroduced this year, it’s a promising figure.

Sources: Vjesnik, Novi List

Good growth in British visitor numbers to Croatia this year

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During the first day of the World Travel Market 2011 in London yesterday, statistics for the number of British visitors to Croatia this year were revealed – showing promising growth for the year.

During the first 10 months of this year, 260,000 Brits travelled to Croatia which is more than the number visiting the country during the whole of last year. There were 5% more British tourists in Croatia from January to October 2011 compared to the same period in 2010, whilst the number of nights stayed by British tourists in these ten months was also 5% up on last year.

More exciting than that, however, is the visitor numbers outside of the main height of the season. Healthy growth in British tourist numbers occurred during both pre- and post-season, and in this October alone, there were 17% more British visitors than in October 2010.

The above figures are still some way off the pre-war days – when nearly half a million British tourists visited Croatia each year – but it is certainly a step back to the level of visitors before 1991, and especially to the number of Brits who visited out of season back in those days.

Visiting Croatia is of course becoming easier for British tourists year on year – Director of the Croatian National Tourist Board, Niko Bulic, revealed that there were 70 flights between the UK and Croatia and 163 UK tour operators offering holidays to the country. (Gosh, we remember the days when a mere handful of companies sold holidays to the country and there was practically no choice of airline!)

We have mentioned a number of new air routes to Croatia for 2012 – see our Getting There by Air 2012 page details of all announced air routes, including new ones – and Croatian newspaper Vjesnik reports that discussions are taking place with a number of other airline companies. (We eagerly await to see what comes of this – if anything!) The newspaper reports that this year’s Jet2.com lines to Split and Dubrovnik brought 50,000 passengers from the UK.

Possible negative effects from the current economic downturn on visitor numbers may be lessened – according to Vjesnik – because of the proximity of Croatia to the UK, as holidaymakers chose to holiday closer to home in tough economic times. The two-hour (or thereabouts) flight to Croatia from the UK also means the country can position itself well in the short break market.

However, Vjesnik also states that some UK tour operators believe Croatia’s top category hotels are rated too generously, whilst another negative is that package holidays to the country can be more expensive than similar ones in other Mediterranean countries.

Source: Vjesnik

New air route for 2012 – Newcastle to Dubrovnik!

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British low-cost airline Jet2.com announced a few days ago that they are to add a second brand new air route to Croatia for 2012! Following the news that they are to commence flying from Manchester to Pula next year, the airline is also to establish a route flying from Newcastle to Dubrovnik – the very first route to Croatia from this northeastern English city. (Welcome to Croatia, oh people of Newcastle!)

The Newcastle-Dubrovnik route will operate once a week, on Saturdays, from 4th June to 7th October 2012. This brings the total number of the Jet2.com routes to Croatia to seven – they operate flights from Leeds Bradford, Manchester, Edinburgh and Belfast to Dubrovnik, and also from Manchester to both Pula and Split. All their flights operate once a week, bar the Manchester to Dubrovnik route which flies twice a week on Thursdays and Sundays.

Newcastle to Dubrovnik flights are available from £41.99 one-way including taxes, and holidays from Newcastle to Dubrovnik are available from £399 with Jet2holidays.

The great news for people travelling from the UK is that there are now numerous flights to the country from a variety of airlines, many of which have already announced their schedules for summer 2012. Take a look at our Getting There By Air 2012 page for full details!

Camper van

How Croatia’s campsites have fared this year for visitors

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Today’s Vjesnik featured an article on this year’s visitor numbers at Croatian  campsites. Much has been made of the fact that Croatia has had a good tourist year in 2011, with a healthy rise in both the number of visitors and the number of nights stayed (with promising number levels arriving in pre- and post-season), although recent news has suggested that campsites haven’t fared quite as well. In particular, signs point to the fact that campsites are still receiving the vast majority of their visitors right at the peak of season, particularly during the month of August. Nevertheless, let’s take a more detailed look at the number of visitors Croatian campsites have received this year.

Camper van

Figures from the Croatian Camping Union show that, up until the end of August, two million tourists arrived at the country’s campsites, staying for 13.4 million nights in total – up 750,000 nights on last year. This means that there was 5.5% more arrivals and 5.9% more nights stayed on the same period in 2010. Some of the largest increases in visitors numbers were registered by campsites in the Croatian interior, indicating promising future growth for such sites.

80% of the nights stayed at Croatian campsites were by visitors from just five countries – Germany, Slovenia, The Netherlands, Italy and Austria. Domestic visitors, on the other hand, clearly aren’t ones for holidaying at campsites – during January to August this year, only around 50,000 stayed in camps, staying 391,000 nights in total. Although the number of Croatian campers did rise from 2010, they still make up a very small percentage of the total visitors – and, in fact, the number of nights they stayed this year was just 3% of the total.

Taking a look over a longer-term period – from 2009 to 2011 – there was an increase in the number of and nights stayed by visitors of each of the countries of Germany, Slovenia, Austria, Poland, Belgium, Switzerland and the UK. However, there was a fall in the number of nights stayed annually by camp holidaymakers from the Netherlands (down 4%), Italy (1%), Denmark (3%) and France (2%).

The best performing campsites in Croatia – some even seeing visitor growth of over 10% – were those of best quality in the facilities that they offer (therefore being the most expensive to stay at!) whilst those that haven’t been as heavily invested in have had problems encouraging visitors to their sites.

If you fancy staying on a campsite in Croatia during your holiday, do take a look at the excellent website of the Croatian Camping Union. They offer details of nearly 300 campsites in Croatia (the majority of those in the country are situated on the coast) with something for all sorts of budgets. Don’t forget that many sites have very good facilities – swimming pools, sports areas, facilities for children – so can be a great alternative to a hotel.

Sources: Vjesnik

Accommodation on Rab

Days of Croatian Tourism comes to a close – and the award winners are announced!

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The three-day Days of Croatian Tourism (Dani hrvatskog turizma) conference, the traditional annual gathering of tourism professionals from both Croatia and abroad, came to close on the evening of Friday 21st October. Held in Sibenik this year, the event was organised by the Ministry of Tourism, the Croatian National Tourist Board, the Croatian Chamber of Commerce and Croatian Radio Television (HRT) and was intended to act as a forum for discussion of this year’s tourism results and to also look ahead to next year’s plans.

The culmination of the event saw a number of awards given out for the best tourist resorts and destinations in Croatia, both on the coast and in the interior, as well as awards given out in specific categories (such as best tourist information centre, souvenir, and site of interest) and to employees in the industry. (Some of these awards – in particular destinations that placed second and third in the Plavi and Zeleni Cvijet categories mentioned below – were in fact announced in a separate ceremony on Thursday night.)

Accommodation on Rab

Rab Town

The biggest winner on the night, awarded the “Tourist Flower – Quality for Croatia” prize presented by Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor, was the town of Rab. Other coastal destinations that were winners of the “Plavi Cvijet” (“Blue Flower”) awards were Opatija (in the category of over 10,000 inhabitants); Krk (3,000 – 10,000 inhabitants), Nin, which is near Zadar (1,000 – 3,000 inhabitants); and Mlini, near Dubrovnik (less than 1,000).

Interior destinations received the “Zeleni Cvijet” (“Green Flower”) award, and these went to Velika Gorica, just south of Zagreb; Djakovo, near Osijek; Nasice, also near Osijek; and Groznjan, in the Istrian interior. (These four towns are winners of the same categories according to number of residents as mentioned above.)

For the first time this year, three awards were given out to recognise cultural achievements in tourism in Croatia. The town of Zadar was winner of the Destination of Culture category; the Nikola Tesla Memorial Centre in Smiljan was winner of the best cultural institution; and the Rab Fair on the island of Rab, a medieval summer fair, was winner of best cultural event.

Sources: HRT, Croatian National Tourist Board; HRT; Zadarski List

Visitor nationalities in Croatia this year – and where they visited

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The very healthy tourists numbers reported for Croatia for September and the first nine months of the year as a whole – as detailed in our previous post, Tourist numbers in Croatia up again in September – have also uncovered promising rises in the number of tourists from certain countries and the number of visitors for specific regions in Croatia itself.

September saw 1,274,460 visitors arrive in Croatia, up 15% on the same month in 2010. Of those, 105,484 were Slovenian (who, traditionally, always post healthy visitor numbers to Croatia), which is a rather impressive leap of 54% on September last year. Other nationalities that posted strong rises in their numbers during September were those from Austria (15% more), the Czech Republic (12% more) and Belgium (23%).

Onofrio's Fountain, DubrovnikTourists surround Onofrio’s Fountain in Dubrovnik

There were also 19% more Italian visitors, 14% more Hungarian visitors, and 10% more visitors from both Germany and Poland. Although there were “only” 3,554 visitors from China, this was in fact a rise of 68% over September 2010 which points to this country as an emerging nation that would choose Croatia for a holiday.

Of the 10,438,260 tourists that visited the Adriatic counties and the city of Zagreb in the first nine months of the year, 1,097,072 were domestic tourists – up 4% on last year – whilst the remaining 9,341,188 are of course foreign visitors, up 8% on the same period in 2010. All of the Adriatic counties in Croatia posted positive growth in visitor numbers this year, with Istria the best performer (9% more tourist arrivals), then the Kvarner region (7%) and then four Dalmatian counties, Zadar, Sibenik-Knin, Split-Dalmatian and Dubrovnik-Neretva collectively posting an increase of 6%.

Visitor numbers from the “top five” nations – Germany, Austria, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Italy – remained strong for this year as well, although there was a drop in visitors from Denmark (by 5%), Ireland (by 4%) and, understandably, from Japan (by 13%).

Source: Vjesnik

Photos of Zadar - Greeting to the Sun

Tourist numbers in Croatia up again in September

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Sightseeing in Zadar - Greeting to the Sun

At night, the famous Greeting to the Sun becomes an instant disco!

More monthly tourism figures were announced in Croatia and this time round the reported figures are especially interesting as they cover the month of September – traditionally, a “transition” month for tourism as the summer crowds have packed up and gone home and activity in towns and resorts starts to wind down somewhat. Having said that, we’ve long recommended September as one of the best times of year to visit – for the reason that the busy season is over but the good weather remains!

Overall, Croatia welcomed 1.27 million tourists in September, up 15.3% on the same month last year. The month saw tourists stay for 7.26 million nights in total, also up by 11.5%.

Figures for the whole of the year so far have also been released – Croatia received 10.4 million tourists, who stayed for 62.7 million nights; these figures are up 7.6% and 6.7% respectively on the same period in 2010. Of the approximately 750,000 more visitors that Croatia has had so far this year, 500,000 have visited in pre- or post-season, a healthy sign that more tourists are visiting the country outside the traditional holiday months.

It was also revealed that Croatia earned €1.7 billion from tourism in the second quarter of 2011, up 14% on last year. Moreover, 13.6% more people were employed in the tourism industry in the country in the first seven months of the year than last year.

Dubrovnik-Neretva county

Figures were also revealed for individual towns and resorts as well. The county of Dubrovnik-Neretva – home of course to Dubrovnik and Croatia’s southernmost county – recorded 145,316 tourist arrivals during September (9% up on last September), with 695,200 nights stayed (up 11%). For the whole of the year until the end of September, the county received 977,512 arrivals (6% up on 2010) who stayed for 4,810,259 nights (5% up) in total.

German, British and French tourists recored the greatest number of nights stayed, followed by domestic tourists.

Of the total nights stayed in the county, 2,703,739 were in hotels (an increase of 7%), whilst campsites registered 334,150 nights, roughly the same as last year. Registered private accommodation accounted for 1,491,294 nights, a decrease of 1%.

Zadar

Zadar also had a successful September – the town saw 33,773 tourist arrivals during the month (up 6% on September 2010), which was made up of 29,558 foreign tourists (up 5%) and 4,215 domestic (up 17%). Tourists stayed for 112,558 nights in the area, which is a rise of 9% on the nights stayed in September last year.

The most numerous guests were German visitors (5,202) then Austrians (3,284) and visitors from these two countries – unsurprisingly – were also top of the list for nights stayed.

For the whole year, Zadar’s data (incomplete as it has yet to include figures from nautical tourism) shows that the town welcomed around 270,000 guests who stayed for 1.1 million nights. Zadar’s hotels have also done well this year, with 17% more guests who stayed for 29% more nights.

Sources: Vecernji, Dubrovacki Vjesnik, Slobodna Dalmacija

Survey of foreign tourist spending in Croatia

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One of the main bits of today’s tourism news – as featured in Croatian newspapers and other sources – reveals the spending habits of tourists in Croatia, shown in a survey undertaken by credit card company Visa. In the survey conducted in August in Dubrovnik, Split, Zadar and Zagreb amongst 500 foreign tourists, it was revealed that most foreign tourists spend between €16 and €50 per day, which includes their spending on accommodation.

Of this, most respondents – 34% – stated that they spent between €31 and €50 per day, whilst nearly the same percentage – 33.5% – claimed to spend between €16 and €31 per day. Only 4.5% say they spend more than €100 a day; this leaves 28% of people surveyed, the majority of whom I suppose spend between €50 and €100 per day. (I cannot actually see this written in the news reports, however!)

The same survey also asked the holidaymakers their thoughts on why they chose Croatia as a holiday destination, and their experiences on holidaying in the country.

Over half of respondents said they decided to visit the country on the recommendation of friends or family (good going, friends and family!), whilst 22.5% suggested that they made their choice from researching on the Internet. 10.5% stated the influence of the media for helping with their holiday pick.

Over 50% of those that took part in the survey said they were holidaying in Croatia for at least a week; younger tourists were found to stay in one location for shorter periods of time, such as two or three days, whilst those aged between 45 and 54 were more likely to remain in the same resort for longer, in some cases for over twenty-one days.

Private accommodation was the most popular type of accommodation for those surveyed – 37% stayed in private rooms, apartments and so on, whilst 30% stayed in hotels.

The statistic I found the most surprising – but in a good way – was that 76.5% of those surveyed said that they organised their own holiday, with only 16% booking through a travel agency.

Sources: HRT, Vecernji

Croatian transport figures for the first part of 2011

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In an interview with Croatian newspaper Vjesnik, Danijel Mileta, the State Secretary for Railway Transport in the Ministry of Sea, Transport and Infrastructure, revealed some interesting statistics about the assorted types of transport used in Croatia for the first part of the year.

Of the different types of transport used, most saw an increase in passengers over the same period in 2010. Only rail transport decreased in 2011, with 32.1 million people using trains in the first half of the year; in the same period in 2010, 35.6 million travelled. By contrast, 3,149,071 people travelled by air within Croatia between January and July, up 11.77% on 2010.

Meanwhile, there was an increase in the number of people travelling on ferry and catamaran lines in the first sixth months of the year. 4,120,286 people travelled on the seas – a rise of 3.2% – and over 1 million cars where also transported during this period, also a rise of 8.6%. The main ferry company in Croatia, Jadrolinija, transported the most passengers – 3,507,321 – and vehicles – 875,208 – although these figures actually decreased on the year before by 2.9% and 4.5% respectively.

The ferry line that posted the best increase in passenger numbers was the Pula – Unije – Mali Losinj – Ilovik – Zadar route run by Linjska Nacionalna Plovidba; this particular line runs only during season, from the beginning of June to the end of October.

Mr Mileta believes that these healthy rises in sea transport numbers will continue for the rest of the year, so that overall statistics are sure to beat those of 2010, and may come close to the record figures from 2008.

Moving on to road transport statistics, 742,800,037 kilometres of travel were registered on Croatian roads between January and August this year, which is up 3% on both last year and the year before. 23,074,315 vehicles were recorded on the country’s motorways, 2.2% up on 2010.

Much of this interview with Mr Mileta focused on the expansion plans for Zagreb Airport. Bids are currently being submitted (up until the end of October) by companies for the building a new passenger terminal at the airport. The construction of a new passenger terminal should bring in new air routes with additional carriers, he says, and could see it become a hub for southeastern Europe.

Source: Vjesnik