Minister hopeful that tourism revenues could be EUR8 bn

Tourism Minister Darko Lorencin on Tuesday said that the results in the first half od 2015 showed an increase in tourist arrivals by 7% and a 5% increase in bed nights, adding that the results were on the back of the efforts of everyone in the tourism sector, particularly owing to enhanced competitiveness of the private sector which is why he expects that this year's financial results could be close to 8 billion euros.

Lorencin visited the island of Krk where he presented results in H1 which indicated that 4.2 million tourist arrivals were recorded on the Adriatic coast and Zagreb from January to June which is a 7% increase on the year. In that period 16.8 million overnight stays were recorded, which is 5% more on year-on-year.

The figures for June alone indicate 1.9 million or 2% more arrivals, however, there was a slight drop of 1.2% or 9.5 million overnight stays y-on-y.

In H1, 3.6 million were foreign tourists or an increase of 7% and 14.9 million overnight stays were booked by foreign tourists or 4.3% more compared with H1 last year.

There was also a growth in domestic tourist arrivals of 10% and a 9% increase in overnight stays.

Tourism figures were on the increase throughout Croatia's coastal region except in Sibenik-Knin County which has a slight drop in bed nights of 1.3%.

The highest increase in tourism was recorded in Istria County with 1.1 million arrivals, 6.6% up on the year and a total of 5.5 million overnight stays, up 4.2% y-on-y.

The strongest markets from January to June recorded were Germany (22% share), Austria (10%), Slovenia (9.6%), Czech Republic (5%) and Italy (4.7%).

Minister Lorencin added that the ministry would monitor some investment projects in tourism and that construction had already started on some facilities in June.

The minister on Tuesday conducted a tour of the recently refurbished Malin and Villa Rova hotels financed with EU funds.

(Hina)