Tuesday, October 4, 2022
Croatia has drafted a new tourism development strategy which aims to significantly reduce the highly seasonal nature of the country’s air connectivity.
The plan is to achieve this goal through greater cooperation between tourism bodies, airports and airlines.
Some of the proposed measures include incentives for year-round operations, which are already offered by airports, as well as joint promotional activities.
According to aviation analytics company Centre for Aviation, that Croatia is one of Europe’s most seasonally skewed markets and highlights the strong dependence of its aviation market on summer leisure routes, with only low demand during the winter season.
This sees activity peak in July and August, with June and September acting as shoulder months.
Croatia’s Minister for Tourism and Sports, Nikolina Brnjac, said, that our goal is to increase the number of flights available to Croatia throughout the entire year, which contributes not only to air connectivity, but also to the development of a year-round tourism product.
This has been specifically highlighted in the new [tourism] strategy, with the focus of improving both domestic and international air connectivity.
She added, that by collaborating with airlines, tour operators and travel agencies in the field of marketing, the strategy promotes the introduction of year-round flights from major emitting markets.
They are happy because Croatia Airlines connects Croatia with a number of important tourist destinations throughout the entire year.
Croatia’s flag carrier is an important segment of our national brand.
Croatia Airlines itself has also struggled with high levels of seasonality.
This winter, the carrier plans to maintain thirteen international routes from its hub in Zagreb, although one of them will only run until late January of next year.
It will operate a further four domestic destinations, which are funded through a Public Service Obligation mechanism.
As part of its three-year post-Covid strategy, Croatia Airlines has highlighted the reduction of seasonality as one of its highest priorities.
In addition to increasing efficiency and competitiveness, the company faces key operational and structural challenges that includes the year-round flight network, the company said.
Dubrovnik Airport has said it will put a greater focus on reducing seasonality and increasing flights during the winter months.
The airport’s General Manager, Viktor Šober, noted, that winter connectivity will be one of our priorities, however, in order to be more efficient, they will definitely need to improve synergies with the Tourist Board of Dubrovnik and the City of Dubrovnik in our negotiations with airlines.
During the 2022/23 winter season, Dubrovnik Airport should be linked to four international destinations – Athens with Aegean Airlines, Istanbul with Turkish Airlines, Barcelona with Vueling and London with British Airways.
Mr Šober added, that further negotiations are still ongoing with airlines. It is important to highlight that Freebird Airlines Europe will again operate charter flights from Dubrovnik to Central and Western Europe from late September until early December of this year, and again from February 2023.
Split Airport has echoed calls for greater cooperation between all relevant stakeholders to reduce seasonality.
Almost half of our annual traffic is achieved during July and August. During the four summer months they have the most passenger traffic in the country.
They are extremely seasonal in character. They need attractions which are not only of interest to locals but must be competitive with European metropolises because we need to measure up to them.
This is not easy or cheap and it requires time, energy and vision.
There are some good developments, but they must work on creating an appealing offer for tourists to come outside of the peak season and then they will have more aircraft arriving in the winter, the airport recently noted.
It added, Carriers say they don’t want to fly to a destination where they register fantastic results between April and October, which then have to cover losses generated over the winter.
They want certainty and that is why there are so many airlines in Split in summer and few in winter.
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
Wednesday, May 1, 2024
