News

Dear tourism workers and all tourism friends, dear guests, The high season period has started. According to the first indicators of tourism result for the past six months the tourist season has met all our expectations. Therefore, we are very optimistic in regard to the following weeks as well as to the final results of the entire season. However, until then, until the last day of this year, it is our mission to pursue our operational tasks maximally focused and in the high-quality manner. I would like to extend my greetings once again to all the tourism workers, hotel managers, waiters, chefs, chambermaids, entertainment organisers, private lessors and everybody else who is directly engaged and has contacts with tourists on a daily bases through their businesses, thus representing our country and forming impressions that shall encourage our guests to visit us again and communicate their content with holidays spent in Croatia. Your hard work, professionalism, courtesy and smiling face are the reflection of Croatia as a tourist destination. Consequently, I encourage you to persist even in situations requiring overtime arrangements and urgent and busy tasks’ finalisation and to stay true to the motto postulating that a guest always comes first and that a guest is always right.

Croatia's tourist sector in the first six months recorded 5.2 percent more tourist arrivals and 5 percent more overnights along the Adriatic coast and in Zagreb in comparison with the corresponding period the year before, however this is only an introduction to what is expected of the tourist sector and efforts must be made so that the number of arrivals and overnights be at least the same as last year and total revenues in tourist sector up by three to five percent, Tourism Minister Veljko Ostojic said on Monday.

Croatian Tourism Minister Veljko Ostojic on Tuesday visited the Zagreb Golf & Country Club's golf courses ahead of the European senior golf championship to take place in Croatia, saying Croatia needed golf courses for its tourism but that they must not be a cover for excessive construction. The European championship will take place in Zagreb and Mokrice on July 8-12 and draw about 300 players from 22 countries, reporters were told today. Ostojic said Croatia's tourism urgently needed about 20 golf courses, which required legislative amendments, notably to the construction law so as to give golf courses the status of green areas and not construction land.
 

 With regard to announcements of extreme heat conditions during summer months,  the Ministry of Health issued a warning/prevention guide/the following tips for citizens, especially for the elderly and the people with chronic diseases, on how to behave during periods of extremely high temperatures

Croatia-Israel tourist cooperation and cooperation in investments were some of the topics of talks Croatian Tourism Minister Veljko Ostojic held with his Israeli counterpart Stas Misezhnikov in Zagreb on Tuesday.

Ostojic and Misezhnikov told a news conference that potentials were great for developing cooperation, adding that Israeli tourists were increasingly interested in Croatia as a vacation destination.

The two minister also talked about possibilities of investing in Croatia's tourism.

Croatian Tourism Minister Veljko Ostojic on Saturday expressed his condolences to those involved in a fatal bus accident in which eight Czech nationals died and over 40 were injured when their Zadar-bound bus crashed into a motorway barrier and tumbled near the Krpani tunnel on the motorway from the capital of Zagreb to the Adriatic city of Split at 3.50 am Saturday. The tourism ministry will offer all the logistic support to the families whose dearest ones had travelled in that bus to the Croatian coast on their summer holidays, the Croatian ministry said in a press release.

Croatian Tourism Minister Veljko Ostojic met the Slovenian Minister of Economic Development and Technology, Radovan Zerjav, in the Slovenian town of Otocec Ob Krki on Friday to discuss bilateral cooperation in tourism, joint promotion of tourist services on third markets and expectations from this year's tourist season. Addressing a joint press conference, both ministers expressed their satisfaction with the present cooperation, hopeful that it would continue to develop successfully. Ostojic said that with 1.1 million tourist arrivals and 6.6 million bed/nights last year, Slovenians were the second largest group of foreign tourists visiting Croatia after Germans, adding that he hoped that that would continue this year as well. Citing unofficial figures for the first quarter of the year, Ostojic said that Croatia saw a 9% increase in the number of tourist arrivals and 13% more bed/nights than in the corresponding period of 2011, and that he believed that results later on in the year would be as good.

On the Croatian coast and in Zagreb there were 1.8 million tourists and 6 million overnights in the first 5 months of 2012, which is 9 per cent more tourists and 13 per cent more overnights compared with the same period last year, according to preliminary figures of boards of tourism. Tourism Minister Veljko Ostojic has said the results are excellent and that he is optimistic that this tourist season could be financially better than last year by 3 to 5 per cent. Ostojic said the excellent results were achieved despite the relatively bad weather and the holiday schedule in the low-season.