In July 2020, Croatia generated better tourism results than its competition in Mediterranean countries, and achieved 50% of the foreign arrivals recorded in July 2019 and its results for January-July were better too, at 32% of last year's arrivals, the Croatian Tourist Board (HTZ) said on Monday.
An analysis conducted by the HTZ is based on official tourist data from Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Turkey for July as well as for the first seven months of the year, underlining that Greece, France and Italy have not yet released their data for July or August.
Croatia has access to very up-to-date if not the most up-to-date tourism statistics in Europe through its eVisitor system and since many other countries do not have a similar system, their August results cannot be used for comparison, HTZ director Kristjan Stanicic said, adding that data for July indicate that Croatia opened up much quicker in the first part of the summer season, which led to better results and positioning in source countries.
In July, 2.5 million foreign tourists came to Croatia, which is about 50% of the number of foreign arrivals in July 2019, whereas in the period from January to July it generated 3.3 million arrivals or 32% compared to the same period last year.
Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Turkey had much lower figures in tourist arrivals in the period analysed.
Spain generated 25% of arrivals year on year in July, with 2.5 million foreigners, and 13.3 million arrivals in January-July, 28% of the number in the same period last year.
Portugal recorded about 306,000 tourist arrivals in July or 17% of July 2019 figures. Data for January-July were not available yet.
About 65,000 tourists arrived in Cyprus in July this year or 12.% compared to last year’s July and a total of 321,000 tourist arrivals were recorded in the period from January to July or 15% of arrivals in that period last year.
Turkey generated 933,000 tourist arrivals in July or 14% of last year’s July turnover and about 22% of last year’s results were achieved in the period from January to July with 5.4 million arrivals.
HTZ considers that additional effort in promoting Croatia in source countries led to the better results, with most tourists coming from Germany, Slovenia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary and elsewhere. HTZ continued with physical and other forms of communication with tourist associations, governments and diplomatic missions which was crucial in the end and, considering the circumstances and the finances we had, we have done a great job, Stanicic concluded.
