This January, Croatia has seen over half a million, or 532,000 overnight stays, up 20.5% year-on-year, and a whopping 30% increase from January 2016. The number of tourists also rose from 150,000 two years ago, to 211,000 this year.

Both numbers represent the biggest growth over the past 15 years. Tourists from Germany and Italy, as ever, led the numbers, followed by tourists from Slovenia, Austria, Bosnia and Korea. The number of Italian tourists actually declined slightly, but that was compensated by a 14% increase in arrivals from Korea. It seems that Croatia is most popular among the younger middle generation, between 35 and 44 years of age.

The biggest number of stays, 141,000, was clocked in Zagreb, around 26% of the total. It would seem that the tourists prefer staying in hotels, as hotel stays accounted for 340,000 of overnight stays or 64% of the total.

The Chamber of Commerce believes this is due to the European Handball Championship, and to the fact that Zagreb was again voted the Best Advent Destination in Europe. But this is still not enough to level out the number of tourists, as in the best month of last year (August) there were 64 times more of them than in January 2017. This is the biggest gap of all EU countries, and Greece, which comes in second in that category, shows a difference of 19 times between the best and the worst month. Also, Jutarnji List notes that only three counties – Istria, Splitsko-Dalmatinska and Primorsko-Goranska account for two thirds of all tourist visits through the year.

In 2017 there were 13% more visitors than in 2016 – 17 million tourists stayed a total of 82.6 million nights. Again, most of them came from Germany, Slovenia and Austria.