April 1, 2022 - As a support measure for those who have fled Ukraine due to the Russian invasion, Booking.com has enabled the Ukraine Refugee Rate, a special rate that allows its partners to offer accommodations for free or at a significantly lower price to Ukrainian refugees.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24 this year, has forced more than 4 million Ukrainian citizens to leave their homes and cross borders to seek asylum in neighboring countries. The majority of refugees are women and children, who have found a very warm reception at the borders of countries like Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Moldova, and more. As of March 30, 11,200 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in Croatia. Although many have had to stay temporarily in refugee centers in different parts of the country, there are those who are looking for alternative accommodation such as apartments and hotels.

In order to make it easier for refugees from Ukraine to find accommodation in the country where they are, as well as to allow property owners a way to help them, the company Booking.com has made available to all those who rent their properties on their platform the Ukraine Refugee Rate option. Thus, the accommodations can now create a special rate, exclusive for Ukrainian refugees, that allows property owners to offer accommodation for free or at a significantly lower price to them.

''We want to work together to help refugees from Ukraine find a place to stay via our platform'', reads the email sent by Booking.com. ''If you’re able to help, you can now create a Ukraine Refugee Rate to support people in need. This special rate allows you to offer accommodations for free or at a significantly lower price''. Additionally, Booking.com points out that they will waive commission for these stays.

Among the conditions to apply this special rate, Booking.com indicates the following:

''We appreciate any support that you’re able to offer. We want to make this process as smooth as possible for you and the people you’re helping:

The Ukraine Refugee Rate is only available to people leaving Ukraine who make a last-minute booking (0–3 days before check-in). This condition is designed to help you better manage the number of rooms you can commit to this effort.

Given the challenging circumstances people leaving Ukraine are facing, the Ukraine Refugee Rate will offer them control and flexibility, allowing them to cancel for free anytime''.

Booking.com has also prepared a FAQ article with more details about the Ukraine Refugee Rate, in order to clear doubts about this special rate for both Ukrainian citizens and property owners.

Which partners can offer a special rate to refugees from Ukraine?

At the moment, partners in the following countries can create this rate: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, the Republic of Ireland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

The special rate currently applies for bookings and stays until June 30, 2022.

Who can book a stay using this rate?

This special rate enables partners to offer people leaving Ukraine a place to stay for free or at a significantly reduced rate. When your guests arrive, we recommend that you ask them for some form of identification document to confirm that the rate was booked by eligible guests.

Bear in mind that people may have had to leave their homes with little time to prepare. We recommend that you accept passports, ID cards, or any other form of documentation that shows your guests were residing in Ukraine.

You can cancel reservations within reason should you find that this rate wasn’t booked by eligible guests.

Rate details and cancellation policies

Given the incredibly challenging circumstances people leaving Ukraine are facing, you can only use the Ukraine Refugee Rate in conjunction with Fully Flexible rates. This allows the people you’re helping to have as much control and flexibility over their booking as possible. They’ll be able to cancel anytime without charges. If you haven’t already set up a Fully Flexible rate for your property, do this before creating a Ukraine Refugee Rate.

When you create this rate, you can choose to either:

• Offer a discount of between 50% and 99% on your usual rates, or
• Offer accommodations for free. In this case, for technical reasons we’ll display the price of the room or unit as EUR 0.01 (before any taxes and fees) or the equivalent in your local currency, but your guests won’t need to pay anything.

If taxes or other fees apply to the booking based on relevant laws and regulations in your country, handle these as you normally would since they're beyond our control. However, we do encourage that you waive any additional booking-related fees, such as cleaning fees.

How the reservation process works

This rate currently applies for bookings and stays until June 30, 2022. Last-minute bookings can be made from zero to three days before check-in, and for stays of up to 30 days. This condition is designed to help prevent double-bookings at your property and to ensure space for those who need it.

To best support these guests, we encourage you to collect payment (where applicable) during check-in using a pay at property policy. If that's not possible, we'll support payment options for you. Because you can only use the Ukraine Refugee Rate in conjunction with Fully Flexible rates, these guests will be able to cancel anytime without charges or no-show fees. Of course, Booking.com will waive our commission fee for these reservations.

Creating this rate

If your property is eligible to create a Ukraine Refugee Rate and you’d like to offer people leaving Ukraine a place to stay, here’s how to get started:

1. Log in to the Extranet
2. Click Promotions
3. In the Humanitarian aid section, click Assist next to Ukraine Refugee Rate
4. Select whether you’d like to offer a percentage discount on your usual rates or offer accommodation for free
5. If you choose to offer a percentage discount, enter a percentage between 50% and 99%
6. Select the rate plans and rooms or units you’d like the rate to apply to
7. Click Review
8. Review the details you’ve entered, then click Activate

Canceling ineligible bookings

If a guest books the Ukraine Refugee Rate but isn’t eligible for it, you’ll need to cancel the reservation. You can do so by sending the guest a cancellation request with a note explaining that you believe the booking was made in error. Alternatively, you can contact our Customer Service team who will support you with the cancellation process.

Rent A Local Croatia has prepared a very helpful guide for Ukrainian citizens seeking asylum in Croatia. You can read it HERE.

For more on the Ukraine crisis and Croatia, as well as breaking news, follow our news section.

For more, check out our business section.

ZAGREB, October 25, 2020 - Local travel will stay at the top of the list for 55% of Croatian people, Vecernji List daily said on Sunday, citing a survey by the Booking.com platform according to which a destination's safety will be important to tourists in post-pandemic times.

Tourism was the pandemic's first victim, but COVID did not kill off the will to travel, according to the Booking.com platform's survey conducted on 20,000 people from 28 countries.

The restrictions have increased the will to get away, so 63% of the respondents said that in the future they would appreciate the freedom to travel even more..

Fifty-three percent of foreign travellers and 41% of our citizens think that travel will not be carefree and pleasant. Once the pandemic finishes, however, 41% of Croatian citizens will treat themselves to a trip, while 31% will go on a trip that they had to cancel because of coronavirus.

As many as 67% travellers from Croatia say that in the future they will pay more attention to the price, and nearly as many are planning to look for promotional offers and other ways to save on travel.

Local travel, which is currently in the forefront, will remain at the top of the list for 55% of the Croatian participants in the survey.

About 53% of them will avoid travel during peak season. Working outside the office, which has become widespread due to coronavirus, will result in long trips where work and holiday can be combined. Twenty-eight percent of travellers from Croatia have already thought about that, Vecernji List daily said.

September the 13th, 2020 - Booking.com is, along with AirBnB, one of the most frequently used platforms for reserving private accommodation when going on holiday. Unfortunately, the leading company's Split office is set to close its doors as a result of the negative economic consequences caused by the spread of the new coronavirus.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has dealt a heavy blow to the travel and tourism industry on a global scale, and countries like Croatia, which rely very heavily on that industry as one of their most important economic branches, have been hit hard indeed. As much as 20 percent of Croatia's GDP is made up from travel and tourism, and as the virus continues to spread, difficult decisions need to be made.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 12th of September, 2020,  Booking.com, one of the world's leading online platforms for booking accommodation across the globe has decided to put the key in the lock of its Split office, as reported by Dalmatian portal Slobodna Dalmacija.

The news was officially confirmed to Slobodna Dalmacija on Friday from the company's headquarters in the City of Zagreb. The closing of Booking.com's Split office has been rumoured for days among a large army of Split-based landlords and tourist workers of all kinds, who have been surrounding by Booking.com for years in their own respective lines of tourism work.

''In August, we announced that due to the devastating impact of the COVID-19 crisis, we will be forced to reduce the number of our employees globally. Unfortunately, we can confirm that the employees in our Split office are also affected by the announced changes in business,'' Slobodna Dalmacija was told from Booking.com through their PR agency Dialog-komunikacije.

For the latest travel info, bookmark our main travel info article, which is updated daily. 

Read the Croatian Travel Update in your language - now available in 24 languages

Join the Total Croatia Travel INFO Viber community.

May 22, 2020 - Although travel plans are currently on hold, data collected by Booking.com reveals that this has not stopped travel enthusiasts from daydreaming. A look at how travelers in Croatia plan to vacation after the corona crisis. 

HRTurizam reports that after reviewing the millions of “Wish Lists” travelers have created on Booking.com over the past two months, with more than 100,000 different destinations recorded since early March, Booking.com has decided to share the top destinations and accommodation units travelers have been thinking about as they wait for when they can start traveling again.

Destinations such as Bali, Andalusia, London, Florida and Paris continue to inspire travel enthusiasts around the world, but due to the uncertain situation in the last two months, as many as 51% of travelers globally have chosen destinations within their country. At the same time, 33% of travelers expressed a desire to visit domestic destinations.

In 2020, as many as 48% of those wishing to visit destinations within Croatia is on the Wish List, which represents an increase compared to 2019, when 38% of domestic passengers said so.

Since the beginning of March, Zagreb, Split, Zadar, Dubrovnik, Opatija, Rijeka, Makarska, Rovinj and Osijek have been at the top of the wish list of domestic destinations from Croatia, which tells us that travelers are looking forward to visiting sunny cities on the coast and beaches, but also the hustle and bustle offered by the big cities in the interior after weeks spent in isolation. Travelers who have already visited these destinations recommend them for their history and beautiful old buildings, walks along rivers or the sea and friendly people.

When we talk about adventures abroad, travelers from Croatia mostly dream of big European cities of culture as well as destinations in neighboring countries. In that list, Istanbul (Turkey) was in the first place, then Budapest (Hungary), London (UK), Belgrade (Serbia) and Paris (France), and in the top destinations were Rome (Italy), Lisbon ) and Sarajevo (BiH).

Also on the Wish List of countries that travelers from Croatia would like to visit are Italy, Turkey, Spain, the United Kingdom and Serbia. Nevertheless, domestic destinations are still a favorite of travelers from Croatia on the Booking.com Wish List.

While dreaming of changing the environment and spending the night outside their home, travelers from Croatia most wanted to stay in apartments, hotels, guest houses, cottages, and resorts. As many as 41% of travelers from Croatia during the last two months have expressed a desire to stay in apartments, which is much more than the global average of 20%.

The three most desirable accommodation units in Croatia for travelers from Croatia are Apartments Lisinski in Zagreb, Madison Luxury Apartments in Zagreb and Plitvice Holiday Resort in Grabovac. The most desirable accommodation units outside Croatia for travelers from Croatia are Apartment East West (Belgrade, Serbia), Nusha Apartments (Belgrade, Serbia) and Alpin Panorama Hotel Hubertus (Trentino Alto Adige, Italy).

"These are challenging times where security is a top priority. At Booking.com, we know that in times like these, thinking about how we’re going to explore the world again has great power that brings us inspiration and a good mood. It’s amazing to see the range of different travel experiences our customers dream about during the period they’ve been waiting for the opportunity to pack up and hit the road again," Maja Vikario, regional manager, told Booking.com.

Interestingly, on the top 1000 global list of the most desirable destinations in the world, there are as many as nine regions from Croatia with Split-Dalmatia County at the top, after which Istria and the Dubrovnik-Neretva County are on the list.

To read more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

January 15, 2020 - Booking.com announced the winners of the Traveler Review Awards 2020. Croatia is once again among the top 10 most awarded countries. 

HRTurizam reports that nearly one million awards (986,449) were awarded across 220 countries and territories. Among the ten countries with the highest award winners was Croatia, which boasts 42,763 winners.

The awards acknowledge these partners for their superior hospitality and for providing travelers with incredible experiences when booking accommodation.

Numerous countries and destinations continue to provide excellent service year after year, and in 2020, the countries with the most awards include Italy (130,253), Spain (66,755), France (61,492), Germany (49,777), Croatia (42,763), the United States (42,112), the United Kingdom (41,848), Poland (36,793), Russia (36,296) and Greece (33,259).

The spectacular increase in the number of award winners continues this year among apartments. This type of accommodation is again at the top of the list, accounting for almost 40% of winners among accommodation facilities globally in 2020.

For the third year in a row, they made up four of the five most awarded types of accommodation: apartments (380,936), hotels (179,869), private accommodation (94,162), weekend homes (82,241) and bed and breakfasts (75,875). In Croatia, the most awarded accommodation types are apartments (33827), private accommodation (3989), weekend homes (1555), villas (933) and hotels (729).

Although hotels are second in awards globally, three-quarters of all award-winning accommodations (75%) are made up of apartments and holiday homes and other unique accommodations, including options from boats and igloos to country lodging. A recent poll conducted by Booking.com on more than 22,000 travelers found that nearly two-fifths (39%) of global travelers prefer to stay in a weekend home or apartment over a hotel.

Dubrovnik, Zagreb, Opatija, Baska, Cavtat, Osijek, Cres, Korenica, Slunj, and Rakovica provided the warmest welcome on the Croatian market. 

On the other hand, the top 10 Croatian accommodations to receive the Traveler Review Awards in 2020 are Apartment Spectre, Zagreb, Embassy Row BnB, Zagreb, Studio Makala, Trogir, Momentum Apartment, Split, Apartments Beso, Makarska, Luxury Apartment Dvor, Split, Apartment Roman Heritage, Split, Neretva Valley Apartments, Metković, Apartmani Nila, Pučišća, and PREMIUM, Osijek.

To read more about travel in Croatia, follow TCN’s dedicated page.

As Marija Crnjak/Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 24th of May, 2019, Croatia's private accommodation renters who advertise their premises on platforms such as Booking.com and Airbnb should make sure they are properly registered on the eVisitor system in order to avoid potentially serious consequences. A visit from an inspector could occur at any time.

Along with the beginning of the summer tourist season, the strengthening of the supervision of the properties rented out privately to tourists from landlords and owners, as well as other types of hospitality facilities, is on the cards. State inspectors will be out in full force this season, and they will, among carrying out numerous other tasks, "comb" through potential unregistered listings and punish Croatia's many illegal renters.

This ''action'' will be assisted by the central eVisitor information system that applies to all categorised facilities, and uncategorised apartments and houses will also be searched out on booking and reservation platforms such as Booking.com and Airbnb, as has been confirmed by the state inspectorate.

There are numerous types of categorisation in place for private accommodation, and each and every facility that rents its space to tourists must be correctly registered on Croatia's eVisitor system in order for those guests to be registered with the police and/or tourist office upon their arrival (although this is something many choose not to adhere to, and which, in all honesty, isn't enforced well), and more importantly, for the host to be able to pay the correct taxes. In addition, a tax number must be highlighted for such tourist services carried out within the European Union.

A total of 136 jobs have been systemised ready for these types of inspection during the tourist season, and, together with the employees of the Customs Administration of the Croatian Ministry of Finance, a total of 97 jobs for tourist inspectors to carry out the work have now been filled.

At the moment, 52 inspectors are working to cover Croatia's coast, where the majority of illegal renting takes place, through offices in Rijeka and Split, as well as sixteen other associated offices. In addition to that, during the very height of the tourist season, inspectors from Croatia's continental counties will also be there to help out their coastal colleages. They all have access to the eVisitor system, which will help them to detect illegal renters.

The mechanism for locating Croatia's illegal renters is very simple, if the accommodation advertised on online platforms such as those listed above is not registered on eVisitor, this acts as a sign to inspectors that they can take the appropriate action. It has since been found out from private renters that nobody is asking for categorisation certification on those platforms anymore.

Booking.com and Expedia were asking for categorisation certification until the powerful Airbnb entered the Croatian market just a few years ago. Anamarija Cicarelli, head of the Split family accommodation advice centre, says most rental platforms have lost their legitimacy because they simply go off trusting the advertiser without any actual evidence.

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle page for much more.

Click here for the original article by Marija Crnjak for Poslovni Dnevnik

Split has welcomed more than 10 million guests on Booking.com!

What do Croatian and international travellers think of their hosts when staying in private accommodation? How do they rate them, how much interaction is too much and are privacy and inside information the key?

As Lea Balenovic/Novac writes on the 9th of April, 2019, almost two thirds of Croats believe that the host is a key factor when staying in an accommodation facility, and those who are the best rated in the Republic of Croatia, both from domestic and foreign guests, can be found in in Rakovica, Osijek, Bibinje, Korenica, Kaštela, Makarska, Brela, Senj, Trogir and Podstrana.

They are the results of research conducted by the world's leading rental company, Booking.com, on a sample of 21,500 travellers worldwide. As the survey showed, 63 percent of international travellers and 62 percent of Croatian travellers think that their stay was better because of their engagement of the host who did everything they could to make it a better stay for them.

Most travellers want to feel "at home," as they have indicated in such surveys. For 62 percent of international travellers, the main advantage of non-hotel accommodation is the ability to take advantage of the knowledge and information available from the host and decide to stay in a property owned by someone who actually comes from the region in which the property is located. The same goes for 48 percent of Croatian travellers.

Nearly half of the international travellers who partook in the survey, or more specifically 45 percent of them, and 59 percent of Croatian travellers consider the local knowledge and information at their disposal from their host important for their overall budget because they hope to be given insider advice that will help them save some cash and avoid potential tourist traps.

However, while it seems that all travellers who took part in this survey generally consider the same things to be significant, each traveller is looking for a different type of engagement from their host. Therefore, some travellers are satisfied with a simple warm welcome, while others have slightly higher expectations from their hosts.

For example, 52 percent of international passengers and 40 percent of Croatian travellers believe that their host should only be seen once during their stay in order to make them feel welcome, and more than a third of international travellers and almost the same number of Croatian travellers expect their hosts to contact them only during their arrival, registration, and then again when they eventually check out and leave the premises.

What is often even more challenging to hosts is the fact that many travellers also expect them to have some sort of sixth sense and know just how much of a personal touch is needed for each traveller. 69 percent believe that hosts should intuitively know the right amount of time they should be spending with their guests, and that is also what 73 percent of Croatian travellers think. For four out of five international travellers and the same number of travellers from Croatia that means respecting their need for personal space, which means that the feeling of privacy is key.

The hosts also agree. Namely, nearly 80 percent of Croatian hosts think that the most important thing for guests is to be able to properly ensure their privacy.

"Our research reveals that it's very important for the owners and managers of accommodation facilities to find a balance which ensures the best experience, regardless of whether guests are staying in a vacation home, an apartment, in accommodation with their hosts or any other type of facility," explained Olivier Grémillon, the vice president of Booking.com, adding the fact thatt "what is crystal clear is that there is nothing like the ability of ordinary people to turn something into an unforgettable experience."

Make sure to follow our dedicated lifestyle and travel pages for much more.

Click here for the original article by Lea Balenovic for Novac/Jutarnji

Split, Zadar, and Dubrovnik made the top 20 most awarded cities in the world in 2018! 

An ambitious and unusual plan involving Blockchain falls through.