February 15, 2022 - It is reasonable to believe in a possible record summer season in 2022 due to the number of reservations. However, low vaccination rates, rising energy prices, and other factors may still interfere, warns Tomislav Fain, head of the Association of Croatian Travel Agencies.

All EU countries are still on the map of the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in dark red, but most of them with higher vaccination rates are expected to drop more over time than expected in Croatia. Our tourism workers hope that despite low vaccination, rising energy prices and other things, all previous efforts to invest in the season will not "melt", but due to many open questions they do not dare to predict whether we'll have a good start to this season, writes Slobodna Dalmacija.

Booking is better than for 2019, but there is no guarantee that part of these reservations will not be canceled.

''From the current perspective, the view of this year's tourist season seems quite optimistic, especially when it comes to peak season, July and August. Demand is high, reservations are constantly arriving, but we must be very careful because they are all made with the possibility of cancellation and no advance payment'', says Tomislav Fain, owner of the Zadar travel agency "Terra Travel" and president of the Association of Croatian Travel Agencies.

He reminds that the situation with COVID has greatly changed the previous way of doing business and everyone must be flexible, so reservations are accepted without payment.

''We had to adapt to this pandemic. We don’t know what could happen tomorrow, whether there will be an increase in contagion and some new measures again and we had to allow people to cancel their reservations. So we still have to be careful with optimistic announcements, but I say that if everything remains as it is now, there could be a record summer season'', Fain says.

The pre-season is filling up a bit less but he emphasizes that it is a good signal that most airlines left their flights at the beginning of April, which is an indicator that their seats are filling up.

''Our guests are accustomed to having enough capacity and there will probably be a lot of "last minute" reservations'', said the president of the Association of Croatian Travel Agencies.

Vaccination is holding us back

Along with COVID, the rattling of weapons on the border between Russia and Ukraine is not in favor of more frequent trips.

''At the moment, we do not know how the situation will unfold there by the summer or how and how much it can affect the arrivals. We, like everyone else, follow what is happening there'', Fain points out.

The interest of the population in vaccination in Croatia is miserable; those who wanted to get vaccinated did so a long time ago, and in the persuasion of those who do not want to do so, the announcement of the ECDC, which will include the parameters of vaccination of the population in the map of European countries, does not help.

''In terms of vaccination, we are the worst of all countries that are our strongest tourist competition. These are "landmines" that can reduce the possibility of a record summer season because even if we do not have a lot of infected people, data on poor vaccination can significantly affect the arrival of guests. If we stay in the red because of that, we will close the door to some markets for ourselves. It is enough for Germany to mark us as undesirable, and here we are in trouble'', concluded Fain.

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January the 6th, 2022 - The Croatian 2022 tourist season has some excellent expectations attached to it as we slowly but surely begin to emerge from the public health crisis the globe has been plunged into since the spring of 2020.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, although it doesn't expect tourist traffic to return to pre-pandemic levels before 2023, the Croatian National Tourist Board (CNTB) is entering the new year with optimistic expectations of continued traffic growth after the remarkably successful 2021 summer season.

On the wings of optimism, they plan to increase revenues this year, especially from tourist/sojourn tax, as well as increase expenditures for their own salaries. The biggest novelty this year, however, will be the new Strategic Marketing Plan, which is set to go down in history with the famous slogan "Croatia Full of Life/Hrvatska puna zivota" and the entire communication strategy that accompanies it.

All this can be taken quite clearly from the recently adopted CNTB Annual Work Plan for 2022. Even if we fail to achieve the results from 2019 this year, the CNTB expects that the high satisfaction of guests who visited various Croatian destinations last year, good value for money and confidence in Croatia's safety measures will position the country among the top destinations in southern Europe and the Mediterranean as a whole.

The Croatian 2022 tourist season is even expected to reach 90 percent of pre-pandemic 2019's tourist traffic. The focus will be on markets from which Croatia can be driven to, as well as European aviation markets such as Scandinavia, the United Kingdom, Russia as more distant markets are recovering much more slowly than European countries are.

This could be further aggravated by the further increase in overall costs for carriers, and consequently airline tickets. Similar problems also await tour operators and agencies.

The growth of tourist traffic in 2022 will also bring higher revenues to the CNTB, primarily from tourist/sojourn tax, the amount of which should increase by as much as 40 percent this year compared to the previous rebalance. The total revenues of the CNTB for 2022 are planned in the amount of 311.4 million kuna, which is 6.3 percent more than in last year's supplementary budget.

Of this, 91.3 million kuna relates to revenues for special funds, the Fund for Underdeveloped Tourism Areas and the Fund for Associated Tourist Boards, while the CNTB plans to generate revenues in the amount of 220 million kuna by the end of 2022.

The plan is also to increase the total revenue from the tourist/sojourn tax by 40 percent when compared to the supplementary budget for 2021, ie the planned revenue in the amount of 114 million kuna. Membership fees should remain the same as in they were in supplementary budget last year, standing at around 31 million kuna, and the plan is to generate 49 million kuna in revenues from the state budget (about 4 percent more than last year).

As such, the implementation of the new Ordinance on salaries, allowances and compensations is planned, which will come before the Tourist Council for a final decision. Although this is not stated specifically, it is to be assumed that the aforementioned ordinance will increase salaries in the CNTB which were reduced during the pandemic, because higher wage expenditures are planned, from 17 million kuna of expenditures in the previous (2021) supplementary budget to 18.7 million kuna in the plans for 2022.

The drafting of the Strategic Marketing and Operational Plan of Croatian Tourism for the period 2022 to 2026 (SMOPHT) will cost around 3.5 million kuna.

According to the CNTB's current work plan, the new SMOPHT will define a new visual identity and communication concept for the promotion and presentation of Croatia as a tourist destination for the Croatian 2022 tourist season, and until the adoption of a new umbrella form of communication, the guidelines of the "Full of Life" communication concept will continue to be used.

Following the adoption of SMOPHT, which will provide strategic guidance, a new advertising umbrella communication concept for the next few years will be created in collaboration with various marketing agencies. The new communication concept will be used to promote the umbrella brand of Croatian tourism at all levels.

An international tender will be launched to select highly specialised agencies to then be selected to develop a new umbrella communication concept, a new logo, brand architecture, photo and video production and an implementation manual. The planned deadline for the preparation of the tender and implementation is autumn 2022, according to the plan. Therefore, the slogan "Full of Life" will continue to be used for almost a year, although its abolition was talked about back in 2017, when the then Minister Gary Cappelli announced a change in the slogan, claiming that it never came to life on the market. "Full of Life" was introduced back in 2015 during the term of Darko Lorencin, replacing the slogan "The Mediterranean as it once was/Mediteran kakav je nekad bio".

When it comes to the promotion of the country ready for the Croatian 2022 tourist season across foreign markets, the CNTB plans to initiate the procedure of opening representative offices in Spain and Ukraine in the second half of the year, if financial opportunities are created and allow for that. Further investment in the domestic market is also planned.

With the aim of developing and stimulating domestic demand outside the summer season, the CNTB still plans to conduct three major campaigns right here the domestic market, the Croatian Tourism Month campaign, the Experience Domestic Campaign, Explore Rural Croatia, and the Croatian Tourist Card Promotion Campaign. On top of that, the all but totally forgotten Croatian Tourist Card promotion will be revived.

The campaign for the promotion of the aforementioned Croatian Tourist Card aims to raise awareness of the benefits of using the card by Croatian employers, as well as to acquaint end users with the opportunities and benefits that this card provides, they explained from the CNTB when discussing the Croatian 2022 tourist season.

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