India and Croatia wish to develop stronger tourism cooperation, particularly in the post-Covid period, but even before that through mutual promotions, it was said at the presentation of the latest edition of the local Place2Go tourism magazine at the Indian Embassy on Monday.

In Croatia there is huge potential to develop tourism and tourism cooperation, and the pandemic is actually a good time and opportunity to plan such cooperation and tourism trends between the two countries, India’s Ambassador to Croatia Raj Kumar Srivastava said at the presentation.

He sees tourism cooperation with Croatia in medical and wellness tourism, which is something that is being worked on intensively in India but there is also a demand for that from that country.

The ambassador said that in 2020 tourism in India was at about 65% of 2019’s level, while its share in GDP did not contract and remained at 9%, mostly due to domestic tourists.

State-Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism and Sports, Tonči Glavina, said that despite the difficult times during the pandemic and suspension in international tourism, India and Croatia can cooperate in promotions, such as this presentation of Place2Go magazine.

“Even though they completely differ with regard to the size of their population, way of life and being in different continents, both Croatia and India nevertheless have something in common that is important for their tourism offer and that is their great diversity in different areas of the country, which can all be tourism products that attract a different public and provide them with experience and adventure,” said Glavina.

He hopes that travel to distant destinations will be possible again soon and that tourists will also come to Croatia, which is launching the preparation of a new strategy of sustainable tourism development which is important for the future. He thanked Place2Go magazine for promoting Croatia and its tourism.

Place2Go Director Damjana Domanovac said that as a small business it too experienced difficulties in business during the pandemic but managed to regularly release its magazine and maintain business contacts.

It plans to hold the regular Place2Go tourism fair in Zagreb in mid-May and hopefully if the epidemiological situation allows, both domestic and foreign exhibitors will participate.

Prior to the pandemic, tourism turnover from India was on the increase and in 2019, which was a record year, 70,000 Indian tourists visited Croatia generating almost 160,000 bed nights, which was an increase of 10% year on year while figures in 2020 contracted to 3,000 arrivals and 14,000 bed nights.