As Morski writes on the 29th of August, 2020, the Mediterranean Book Festival, which will take place from the 2nd to the 6th of September in Split, more precisely in Gripe, is set to offer a rich programme for all lovers of the written word, but also send out an important message - that economic and cultural life must continue despite the iron grip of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

This festival will be a demonstration exercise on how to behave and how to carry out the demanding organisation of such a cultural event in a crisis situation, such as the unprecedented one we're currently in. It will send out a picture of the new normal in Split, as well as how people can be ''treated;; with books during the coronavirus epidemic,'' said the mayor of Split, Andro Krstulovic Opara.

Among other things, disinfection points for feet and hands await the festival's visitors at the very entrance to the Gripe Sports Centre. Of course, it won't be possible to enter without wearing a mask and agreeing to a temperature measurement, and special visitor counters will make sure that the area of ​​1800 square metres isn't too crowded. All vendors at the stands will have a visor over their faces, the distances between the stands will be increased, and because of all this, the working hours of the festival have been extended (from 10:00 to 21:00).

''We know that we'll be under a magnifying glass, but we decided to break the ice and create a frame in which all visitors will feel comfortable and safe. Although social distancing will be kept in mind, IFC is an opportunity for readers to meet the authors in person after a forced break of months and for cultural life to begin to return to normal. For us publishers, the festival is of great importance from an economic point of view, which can be seen in the response of the publishers. About 90 of them will offer visitors over 10,000 titles in the field of journalism, fiction and children's books,'' said the president of the Association of Publishers and Bookstores of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce, Slavko Kozina, adding that this festival is important as a guide for future cultural events, even under these coronavirus-dominated circumstances.

Everyone who decides to go will be able to enjoy a rich programme, from numerous book promotions, through expert panel discussions to workshops for children. Special attention will be paid to children and young people and numerous workshops will be organised which will include creative storytelling, drawing comics, robotics, writing stories and more.

The festival is organised by the Association of Publishers and Bookstores of the Croatian Chamber of Commerce under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, Split-Dalmatia County and the City of Split, with the support of numerous partners, and the project will be held in accordance with all of the recommendations of the National Civil Protection Headquarters and all of the current epidemiological measures.

Admission to the festival is free and you can find out more about the programme, registration for workshops, the prize draw and the festival's STOP COVID-19 measures on the official website.

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ZAGREB, Aug 29, 2020 - Better-than-expected results in the tourist season in July and August in Croatia cannot be applied for stakeholders in conference tourism and tour operators that rely on doing business in shoulder seasons, the association of business tourism within the Croatian Chamber of Commerce said on Saturday.

The association recalls that total coronavirus lockdown was imposed this spring, a period when business tourism usually has the most intensive activities, and this HGK group also fears of the imminent restrictions in the post-season when this type of tourism should resume its activities.

Jasmina Kanas of the HGK business tourism association says in a press release that Friday's decision made by the national COVID-19 crisis management team whereby all healthcare institutions are supposed to postpone congresses, symposiums, conference, workshops, lectures and similar gatherings until further notice is "the last nail in the coffin" for business tourism.

Kanas recalls that a majority of gatherings organised by business tourism stakeholders are in the field of medicine.

Public healthcare protocols can be fully complied with at events organised by our businesses, and participants in such events are people (healthcare workers) who have got accustomed to applying even stricter epidemiological measures, Kanas says.

The HGK group also underlines that it does not blame anyone for the latest developments and that protagonists have the full understanding for the epidemiological measures in place.

We hope that the government will also show understanding, given that our revenues in 2020 are equal to zero, as a direct consequence of the epidemiological measures.

Kanas says that stakeholders in business tourism cannot be equally treated as businesses in other types of tourism that have manged to secure some earnings.

Therefore they request some incentives to overcome this year, such as non-repayable subsidies equal to 10% of their turnover in 2019.

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ZAGREB, Aug 29, 2020 - Over the past 24 hours 312 new coronavirus cases have been recorded in Croatia, bringing the number of active cases to 2,654, the national COVID-19 response team said on Saturday.

Currently, 211 patients are hospitalised, including 12 on ventilators, and three more persons have died, raising the death toll to 183.

Since February 25, when the first case was recorded in Croatia, 9,861 persons have been diagnosed with the new infectious disease, and 7, 024 have recovered.

Currently, 9,148 persons are self-isolating.

To date, 165,716 persons have been tested, including 3,415 over the past 24 hours.

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August 29, 2020 – Renowned British newspaper compares destinations across Europe and claims, though hit economically, Dubrovnik residents can finally enjoy summer again.

Popular British newspaper The Guardian have today published a feature comparing popular European tourist destinations in the year of Coronavirus. Comparing Magaluf, on the Spanish holiday island of Mallorca, Barcelona on the Spanish mainland and Dubrovnik in Croatia, they tell a story of once packed destinations whose streets this summer are comparatively barren.

The positive side of the story is that this breath of fresh air, though damaging economically, has allowed local residents to rediscover their cities.

“At the moment it’s wonderful,” Dubrovnik tour guide Vesna Celebic is reported to have told the Guardian journalist. “The old town is definitely the place that the locals reclaimed. Now you see a lot of kids riding bikes and playing soccer in some of the public squares, you hear the locals again. You hear the local language.”

However, Celebic's words are not wholly optimistic. In the article, she acknowledges that economic difficulties are looming.

“While I think this is a disaster and economically it’s scary, I think it’s also a moment to pause and reflect,” she said to the newspaper in conclusion. "Tourism should be a pleasure, not only for those coming in but also for those staying in and residing in [the city]."

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August 29, 2020 - Split-Dalmatia County has recorded excellent tourist results so far this season - and far more than expected. However, the latest increase in coronavirus cases and Croatia's inclusion on the red list of some countries, some extremely important markets, is a cause for concern. Split-Dalmatia County Tourist Board director Josko Stella believes that, despite everything, the situation can still be improved.

We still have time; the tourist season is not over yet.

"The situation is not good, it is very difficult now, but we still have time to fix it. It is a great pity because this end of August started very well and was better than we expected, but now it all depends on the period ahead, whether we will curb this situation and reduce the number of new infections. We need to take the situation seriously, discipline ourselves, listen to the Headquarters' recommendations, avoid gatherings and physical contacts," says Stella for Lokalni.Vecernji.hrokalni.Vecernji.hr.

Austria, Slovenia, and Italy put Croatia on the red list, and Germany placed Split-Dalmatia County on theirs. August is currently at 68% compared to last year. The most numerous guests in central Dalmatia are Poles, Germans, Croats, and Czechs, so putting Split-Dalmatia County on the red list in Germany could be the strongest blow so far. And after a dry May in which there was no tourism anywhere and a timid June when about 20% of last year’s result was achieved, things went well. According to data from the eVisitor system, in Split-Dalmatia County, 433,820 guests stayed in commercial accommodation in July, 47 percent of the tourist traffic of last July.

They realized 2,898,993 overnight stays or 54 percent of tourist overnight stays realized in the same month in 2019. There were 22,511 arrivals and 160,649 overnight stays in July, representing 50 percent in arrivals and 49 percent in overnight stays compared to the same month last year. He was pleased with the fact that the same number of German guests stayed in Central Dalmatia in July as last year, who had the same number of overnight stays as last year, which is an exceptional success in this turbulent business year.

"In the first seven months, we realized 39% of overnight stays compared to 2019, but now our situation has become more complicated. After the dismissal from Great Britain, we will see what will happen to the Germans. Those blacklists are changeable, and I hope that we will be able to calm the situation and remove us from the lists. If this hadn't happened, we would have had a great September and October, bookings were great, but if it doesn't improve, I'm afraid of canceled reservations," says Stella.

The dismissals from Germany, however, have not yet begun. The County Tourist Board points out that tourist companies, hosts in family accommodation, marinas, and camps respect strict epidemiological measures and protection standards. The Croatian coast has so far proved to be the safest and most acceptable holiday destination in the Mediterranean this season. That this is the case is evidenced by the daily visits of world-famous people to Split-Dalmatia County and its attractive waters. This sent the best marketing message of our tourism to the world.

However, the deteriorating epidemiological situation has also raised concerns at Split Airport, which had 165 landings and take-offs of commercial aircraft on August's first weekend, carrying more than 30,000 passengers in both directions. Although this is a relatively large number, it was only 35 percent of passengers compared to the same weekend last year. In the first seven months of this year, Split airport, which is connected to 60 destinations worldwide, had a total turnover of 277,000 passengers, and in July alone, this airport had 171,815 passengers. The traffic of around 150,000 passengers was expected in August, which is now in question given the situation and the global pandemic.

In order to attract tourists to Central Dalmatia, the Split-Dalmatia County Tourist Board has proposed to the Civil Protection Headquarters to open a point where only tourists will be tested for coronavirus so that those who are obliged to take the test can do so faster and cheaper.

"We would finance part of the costs as the Tourist Board, hoteliers also expressed the will that they would also give a discount to guests who are being tested, and part of the guests would have to pay," says Stella. "In this way, we would meet guests' needs from countries looking for testing for COVID-19 on their return from Croatia. I fully support everything that is determined and implemented by the Headquarters. I call on the inspections and all other authorities to do everything they can so that we can put ourselves in order and save September," says Stella.

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August 29, 2020 - The latest news from around Croatia’s airports for flights to Croatia with updates for Zagreb, Split, Dubrovnik, Zadar, and Rijeka.

Croatian Aviation reports that Windrose Airlines planned to launch the Kyiv-Zagreb route at the beginning of the summer flight schedule, but this route was not established for objective reasons.

The company then postponed the date establishing traffic on this line and then canceled it completely for this year. But Windrose made another change and reopened sales, announcing the first flight for October this year.

The originally planned three flights a week (Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays) are no longer on sale, but the company plans to connect Zagreb and Kyiv twice a week, every Wednesday and Sunday. The first flight has been announced for October 4, and flights will run throughout the winter flight schedule (until the end of March 2021).

This will be the first completely new line for Zagreb Airport this year, which can certainly be considered a success in this crisis. A direct line has never connected the capitals of Ukraine and Croatia.

Windrose plans to use the E145 aircraft on the route to Zagreb, with a capacity of 48 seats. The plane will depart from Kyiv at 11:30 am, with the expected arrival in Zagreb at 12:40 pm. Departure from Zagreb is planned for 13:25, and arrival in Kyiv at 16:20.

Furthermore, Croatian Aviation reported that Poland would ban flights from 46 countries from September 2 this year, and Croatia is among the many countries, according to a draft law released on Thursday. LOT, however, previously announced numerous routes to Croatian airports for September this year.

The Polish national airline currently operates on regular routes from numerous Polish cities to as many as 5 Croatian airports: Zagreb, Rijeka, Zadar, Split, and Dubrovnik. Although many of these lines will stop operating at the end of this month, which is logical considering that the end of the summer season is approaching, the Polish company announced traffic on as many as 7 lines to Croatia through September:

Warsaw - Zagreb,

Warsaw - Rijeka,

Warsaw - Split,

Warsaw - Zadar,

Rzeszow - Zadar,

Warsaw - Dubrovnik,

Krakow - Dubrovnik.

All these routes are still on sale on the LOT website, but the Polish national airline will likely be forced to cancel flights on these routes from the mentioned date (September 2). According to the announcements of the Polish authorities, with the ban on flights between Croatia and Poland, LOT has almost no other choice.

In addition to those who planned to travel directly between Polish and Croatian cities, this decision also affected many transfer passengers that LOT attracts, given the favorable prices.

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August 29, 2020 - A total of 13 countries have introduced specific mandatory restrictions for travel from Croatia, and three more - the Netherlands, Finland, and Denmark - have put Croatia on the orange list.

Slobodna Dalmacija reports that Slovakia is the newest European country to include Croatia on the red list. From September 2, everyone who wants to enter that country will have to self-isolate. Apart from Croatia, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Malta, and Belgium will also be on that list from the same date.

These are countries that have recorded many new coronavirus cases in the last 14 days: Croatia, which on Thursday reached an average of 80.7 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the last two weeks, ranked in the high fifth place of the worst countries.

In front of Croatia are Spain, Malta, Luxembourg, and Romania.

Thus, everyone that was in Croatia and wants to enter Slovakia will have to undergo a 10-day quarantine. Slovakia, on the other hand, recorded 16.3 patients per 100,000 inhabitants in the last 14 days, cumulatively, as of August 27.

Several states have set a limit on the cumulative number of patients in 14 days per 100,000 inhabitants, after which they will set restrictions on return from individual states. For example, Slovenia set that limit at 40 and introduced restrictions on the day Croatia crossed it.

And the growth of the cumulative number in Croatia was rapid: on Thursday, it exceeded 80, and on Assumption Day, August 15, it was less than 30.

A total of 13 countries have introduced certain mandatory restrictions for Croatia, and three more - the Netherlands, Finland, and Denmark - have put Croatia on the orange list, which means that recommendations have been issued not to travel to Croatia and to carry out quarantine, but it is not mandatory. 

The director of the CNIPH, Krunoslav Capak, said that Croatia was still mostly green.

"We have a high incidence, and it is expected that some countries will take some measures against us. However, I must say that most of Europe are still green towards us, and Croatian citizens can still travel to most European countries. We hope that now that the tourist season is waning, we will be able to reduce and improve our indicators, based on which they will then remove us from the red and orange lists," said the main state epidemiologist Capak. On Friday, Croatia came to 2560 active cases.

Among them, 212 patients are in hospital, of which 11 are on a ventilator. On Friday, in the past 24 hours, 2,065 people were tested. There are currently 8,770 people in self-isolation.

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As Poslovni Dnevnik/Ana Blaskovic writes on the 28th of August, 2020, due to the rapid growth in the number of people suffering from coronavirus in the south of Croatia, which Croatia agreed to allow to a certain extent in order to save the tourist season, fitness centres and gyms are among those who will be the first to pay the price thanks to a sweeping decision from the Croatian Government.

At the suggestion of the Split-Dalmatia County Headquarters (SDŽ), local measures were tightened and a wider obligation to wear masks was introduced, but only fitness centres had to put their keys in their locks.

The Minister of Health, Vili Beros, added fuel to the fire by noting that these are new hotspots of infection. The Croatian Government's decision infuriated gym owners as well as the Voice of Entrepreneurs Association (Udruga Glas Poduzetnika) which asked the minister for transparent evidence for this draconian measure accusing the staff of such facilities of negligence and of shifting responsibility.

"The Minister and the National Civil Protection Headquarters must not punish business owners who constantly invest in their facilities in order to makes them as safe as possible and adhere to all epidemiological measures. These are decisions which lump everyone into one category and which cause even more damage,'' point out the UGP, the only association of entrepreneurs that has spoken out on this issue.

“We'd like to point out that fitness centres, gyms, sports halls and clubs were all closed at a time when they generate the most revenue to cover themselves during the summer. Their re-closure will shake the economy and shake families without income,'' they note.

''It's a political decision''

"We know for sure that there were cases in the Joker centre in Split of someone getting infected, but we need to define the direction in which to take these further measures, and not punish the entire industry just because of one case where someone didn't follow the measures. How can you be sure that person didn't contract coronavirus at the post office or when they were on the bus? There were cases when someone in the tax administration became infected, so what are we going to do now, close down the entire tax administration?'' asks Drazen Orescanin from the aforementioned association.

"The decision to close is political because the SDŽ headquarters didn't do its job properly, so now they're shifting the responsibility for those omissions to others. That is just shameless,'' he concluded.

Many see the idea of the introduction of those measures in gyms across the rest of the country putting the 1.2 billion kuna revenue generated annually by the fitness industry in grave danger. Orlando Lopac, the owner of the OrlandoFit Croatia chain, said on Facebook that the minister had a direct impact on the long-term revenues of the entire fitness and sports recreation industry owing to these utterly odd decision.

The owner of the FitnessOF gym chain, Vanja Radjenovic, gives a slightly different perspective. “Right now we aren't locking our doors like we were during the lockdown, but we are being stigmatised. People are afraid and won’t come, and the costs of that are on us all the time. If they fully told us to close, at least we could ask for help from the state,'' he says, illustrating that the turnover this year dropped to 30 percent when compared to last year, meaning down to a mere 50 percent of what is typically achieved in the summer in ''normal'' years.

The request of the UGP Sports Committee, which, on behalf of all SDŽ fitness centres and gyms, asked the Ministry of Finance to pay the salaries of gym and fitness facility employees and write off their contributions for a period of fourteen days, is on a similar train of thought.

"If you want to close us down or limit our business, gentlemen in the Croatian Government, then you have to pay for it, not only with measures to preserve jobs, but also with additional measures - to preserve companies that close or restrict business in the name of force majeure. Without companies, there are no employees,'' said UGP leader Hrvoje Bujas.

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As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 28th of August, 2020, the Minister of Finance, Zdravko Maric, commented on the decline in Croatian GDP in the second quarter, which amounted to 15.1 percent and is the largest decline since statistics have been recorded over the last 25 years.

"This is the biggest quarterly drop ever recorded in the Republic of Croatia, which I don't think should come as big surprise considering the coronavirus pandemic. Government spending is the only category that has recorded growth, which is expected given the circumstances and what we've done. The 14 percent drop in personal consumption is the largest drop in personal consumption ever recorded. We didn't expect such a big drop in investments,'' Zdravko Maric commented.

''Of the total investments in the Republic of Croatia at the annual level, 52 percent refers to construction, and that recorded a slight plus. We believe that the procurement of equipment led to the fact that total investments fell more than we expected them to. We also had a physical barrier regarding the procurement of equipment due to the pandemic,'' noted the Minister of Finance.

When asked whether a large number of dismissals would follow, Zdravko Maric said that no one could guarantee anything, nor can anyone really be very specific on that issue.

"Challenges remain. We all need to do everything we can to save jobs as much as is possible, that's the most important thing now. In some segments, such as construction, it can already be seen that things are getting better, while in others, such as catering and hospitality, things are more difficult,'' stated Maric.

"The decline in the second quarter is at the level of the Eurozone. When looking at individual countries, there are countries that have a higher rate of decline, Italy, Spain, Portugal… We also did an analysis with the first quarter included, and that marked a decline of 7.8 percent, concluded Zdravko Maric.

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ZAGREB, August 28, 2020 - Over the past 24 hours 357 new coronavirus cases have been recorded in Croatia, bringing the number of active cases to 2,560, the national COVID-19 response team said on Friday.

Currently 212 patients are hospitalised, including 11 on ventilators, and three more persons have died.

Since February 25, when the first case was recorded in Croatia, 9,550 persons have been infected with the new virus, 180 of whom have died, while 6,809 have recovered.

Currently 8,780 persons are self-isolating.

To date, 161,701 persons have been tested, including 2,065 over the past 24 hours.

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