Tourism arrivals up

[rijekafan]

15:06 - 12 June 2007
According to data released by the country's statistical office, the number of foreign tourist rose by 14% y/y to 456,630 in April. At the same time, foreign tourist overnights increased by 12% y/y to 1.358 million in April.
In Jan-Apr, the total number of foreign tourists increased by 16% y/y as compared with the growth of 12% y/y in Jan-Apr a year ago.

The total number of tourists rose 14% y/y to 601,489 in April as compared with 20% y/y growth a month earlier. Accordingly the total number of tourist overnights increased by 9% y/y to 1.693 million in April.

The largest number of foreign tourists in April came from Italy (92,183), which registered a growth of 25%.

Most of the foreign tourists preferred to stay in hotels (60.7% of the total) and small camps (13.2%), while the most of the domestic tourists preferred to reside in hotels (65.3% of the total) and vessel cabins (7%).

[irac]

This is nonsense, I can name 2 hotels in Sibenik, 3 in Split(and around) and letting agencies in Dubrovnik who are reporting well under 50% occupancy, this is down to an all time low for May and June to 20%.

I wonder where all these tourists are hiding as until last week the roads and airports were pretty free.

[mambo]

I also would like to know where these figures come from, because wherever I go I only here stories of 'the tourists are staying away' or 'we don't have any bookings'.

The only thing which is definitely up is the cruise tourism and if you start counting them you may very well end up with these figures. Problem is that cruise tourism does not bring in nearly as much money as normal tourists.

[Carol]

there is a capcity issue with the cruise tourists (not enough marina berths). I'd be surprised to learn though that the people who can afford the cruises spend less on land than the average hungarian who brings his own provisions. For a start they eat out most nights.

Here in mid dalmatia its unusually quiet too. The traffic is busier and there are people in the pavement cafes but unless my memory is playing tricks, its just not as busy as it was in June two years ago or last year.

[rijekafan]

I thought the statistics would be controversial!
I got them from Croatia Today who quoted the Croatian Statistics Office. I checked the Crostat website and the numbers seem to add up. Here is the link www.dzs.hr/default_e.htm.
This report seems to be contradicted by the experience of several people here. All I know is that they usualy wave me through at the border. I assume they do that to others, so how can they get an accurate measurement or arrivals?

[irac]

I wondered were you making them up for the sake of discussion :-) But really you're spot on with being waved through, even when you arrive by plane they don't actually note down arrivals, only numbers arriving from the planes themselves. I find a large number of ex-pats come back for family visits that coincide with public holidays (Easter, Christmas etc) and so when you have an "increase" in visitors it isn't telling the full truth.

A number of years ago I worked part time with the CSO in Ireland, primarily on cross-border travel. It is not a true reflection of numbers or even of nationalities or purpose of travel, you get an overview, stick it in a computer prog and you come up with figures.

This year the authorities don't have a World Cup to blame, maybe only their lack of guidance and public greed.

[rijekafan]

My guess is the number of people registered with the Ministry of Interior has gone up rather than numbers.