Minister says very satisfied with start of tourist season

Caretaker Tourism Minister Anton Kliman has expressed satisfaction with the start of this year's tourist season and figures showing that arrivals and overnight stays have gone up 5-6% and 7.5% on the year respectively.

"I am very much pleased with such an excellent start of the season," Kliman said, adding that results on the first weekend of July were as expected.

"The weather is beautiful, tourists are arriving in great numbers. On Monday we will have concrete figures and I'm sure that they will be very good," the minister said.

Asked to comment on data from the Croatian National Bank (HNB) showing that revenues from tourism in the first three months of this year totalled 390.8 million euros, an increase of 16.2% from the same period of last year, Kliman said the result was as expected.

"I believe that the result is owing to resources, both at the state level and in the tourism sector, being managed well. It is good because the synergy between the private and public sectors is good and tourism boards are doing their job excellently," he said.

"We have an ambitious plan of earning EUR 14 billion in revenues from tourism by 2020. Considering the strategies we have, we can expect such results. This year we have opened 40 hotels on the coast, next year even more hotels will be opened," he said, adding that domestic and foreign investors evidently wanted to invest in the Croatian tourism industry because they were aware of "market trends that indicate that Croatia will be among the 20 most attractive destinations."

Asked if Great Britain's exit from the European Union would affect arrivals from that country, Kliman said that tourism officials in Dubrovnik told him two days ago that there had been no cancellations of British bookings for 2017.

(Hina/FaH)