Tourists spent some €10.4 billion in Croatia in 2016, accounting for 11.4 percent of Croatia's GDP that year, with tourism industry's total effect on GDP calculated at 16.9 percent, the first ever Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) report showed.
TSA represents a way of calculating direct and indirect effects of tourism on national economies by tracking various types of data, including tourist spending, jobs, gross investments, etc. Apart from offering a more precise way of measuring the influence of tourism on economy, it also offers a way to compare national economies and the dependence of their revenues on tourism.
“In 2016 spending by foreign and domestic tourists reached €10.4 billion, meaning that tourist industry accounted for 11.4 percent of the country’s GDP, which clearly indicates the importance of tourism. This result is in line with our previous estimates, and we will continue to do everything to achieve the goal we set, which is €14 billion in revenues by 2020,” Tourism Minister, Gari Cappelli, said earlier this week in a news conference presenting the results of the TSA report.
According to state statistics bureau, tourism’s share in Croatia’s national direct gross value added (GVA) was 31.7 billion kuna (€4.3 billion), or 10.9 percent. The bureau said that Croatia topped the list of European countries in terms of share of tourism in national economy as it is followed by Portugal at 6.7 percent, Spain at 6.6 percent, and Italy with 6.0 percent.
The lead of the project to calculate the size of Croatia’s tourist sector, Neven Ivandic of the state-run Institute for Tourism, said that when complete direct and indirect influence of tourism are taken into account, the industry was responsible for 16.9 percent of the national GDP.
Minister Cappelli went on to reflect on frequent speculations in the local media that tourism accounts for some 20 percent of the nation’s economy, which is usually reported as oversized and detrimental to Croatia’s other sectors and the development of the country as a whole.
He said that the percentages normally thrown are flawed as they merely compare tourism revenues to GDP, without accounting for other less visible ways that tourism helps creating added value, helping other sectors grow too.
“In spite of tourism being one of key generators of economic activity in Croatia and the economy’s dependence on tourism… this level of influence on the national economy still isn’t high enough to cause alarm,” Cappelli said.
(€1 = 7.42 kuna)
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