Although Easter falls two weeks earlier than last year, Istria expects about 30,000 visitors for the holidays, only a few thousands fewer than in 2017, head of the Istria County tourist board, Denis Ivošević, said.

Some 25 major and most of the smaller family-run hotels will be open during the holidays, as well as auto camps and apartment rentals which will host their first visitors this year. The biggest groups of tourists by country of origin will be from Austria, Slovenia, Italy, and Germany, Poslovni Dnevnik reported on Thursday.

“Considering Easter will fall two weeks earlier than last year, we expect 5-10 percent fewer visitors. However, this year we had better results in March and the real effect will be seen no sonner than late June, when all the holidays will have passed,” Ivošević said and added Istria plans to beat last year’s record numbers by 1 percent.

CEO of Pula Airport, Svemir Radmilo, also said he believed passenger numbers would come close or surpass the 1987 all-time record when it handled some 702,000 people passing through the airport.

“Easter is too early for us this year, but bookings point to a record high April and the entire pre-season period, until the end of June. In July and August we expect more than 200,000 passengers per month, which would be up by 25-30 percent compared to last year, while in 2018 as a whole we expect numbers to be 15 percent up,” said Radmilo.