In tourist nights, Croatia tourism reaches record height

Published on : Thursday, February 13, 2020

Last year, about 19.57 million tourists arrived in Croatia and 91.24 million tourists stayed overnights were realized in commercial accommodation, which is 4.8 percent and 1.8 percent more (respectively) than the year before. Structurally, the growth of 2019’s tourists resulted from a rise in the number of overnight stays by domestic (9.5 percent) and foreign (1.2 percent) tourists.

In terms of overnight stays made up by overseas visitors, the maximum number of overnight stays were recorded by tourists from Germany (19.94 million), Slovenia (7.50 million) and Austria (7.06 million), with tourists from Germany (-0.2 percent) and Austria (-0.1 percent) realized almost the same number of nights, as tourists from Slovenia recorded a rise of 3.1 percent. Tourists from these three countries accounted for as much as 41 percent of overnight stays realized by international tourists alone.

This continues the concentration of Croatian tourism, which can also been seen in the figures that almost 65 percent of overnight stays are spent in only three Croatian counties like Istria, Split-Dalmatia and Primorje-Gorski Kotar County and that about 60 percent of all nights will be realized in July and August.

With the re-establishment of other countries in the Mediterranean which have always been the competitors of Croatia traditionally, often inexpensive offers, it wouldn’t be quite amazing that the country finally ”comes down” from riding the record tourism wave. For 2020, however, Croatian tourism probably can expect a constant increase in the number of tourist nights realized by foreign visitors.

There has been a conspicuous rise in the share of overnight stays in the last five years realized by tourists from the United Kingdom, and British tourists ranked fifth regarding tourist spending in the initial three quarters of last year. Foreign exchange income from tourism is also expected to increase this year.