June the 21st, 2021 - We travelled from Zagreb down to Split and across to Brac on Saturday. I won't hesitate in saying that I'm in no particular rush to do it again after such bad timing during that day which saw two hours pass before we even reached Karlovac. Such queues are also evident at the Croatian land borders as tourists finally flock back into the country.

As Morski writes, the tourist season in Croatia is finally heating up, and so is the weather with extreme high temperature warnings pinging regularly on mobile weather apps. According to e-Visitor, there are currently about 290 thousand tourists in the country, of which an encouraging 250 thousand are foreigners.

Most of them are currently Istria, almost 100 thousand of them, followed by Kvarner with 62 thousand and further down south in Split-Dalmatia County, with 43 thousand guests currently present, writes HRT. Most of the country's current foreign tourists are from Germany, Slovenia and Austria. Traffic to the sea also increased yesterday morning and waits at Croatian land borders were over 30 minutes.

According to the data of the Croatian Auto Club, 25,230 vehicles were recorded heading down towards the sea by 14:00 on Saturday, which is more than in the third weekend of the pre-pandemic June of 2019. At that time, a little more than 23,000 vehicles passed through the Lucko toll station heading in the direction of the coast. We were one of those lucky and yet unlucky cars.

''If we're going to make a comparison with the most successful year so far, which was 2019, we had 10% higher traffic, which is a great introduction to the beginning of the tourist season,'' said Ivan Ribicic, the director of the Toll Collection Department at HAC, for HTV.

The expected traffic jams are on the motorways A1 Zagreb-Split-Ploce, A2 Zagreb-Macelj, A3 Bregana-Lipovac in front of the Croatian land border crossings Bregana and Bajakovo, A6 Rijeka-Zagreb, Zagreb (A3) and the Rijeka (A7) bypass, motorway A7 Rupa-Diračje towards at the Rupa border crossing and before the Rupa toll in the direction of Rijeka, the Istrian Y towards the Kastel and Plovanija Croatian land border crossings, the Lika (DC1) and Adriatic Highway (DC8), reports the Croatian Auto Club.

Ferries and catamarans are continuing to sail regularly, with occasionally increased vehicle inflows at most ferry ports and docks.

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May 8, 2021 - As the season approaches, Croatia and Hungary have reached an agreement to lift restrictions on citizens crossing the border with a vaccination certificate.

The vaccination process is still underway and the cases of infections continue to decrease in Croatia, and it is thus that, as the summer season unfolds, Croatia and its neighbor to the east have reached a bilateral agreement recognizing each other's vaccination certificates with any COVID-19 vaccine.

As hrturizam.hr reports, this is an agreement which, with the presentation of a vaccination certificate, will enable unhindered travel of Croatian and Hungarian citizens between the two countries, and which will be able to cross borders without restrictions, such as mandatory self-isolation or negative test.

This is great news ahead of the main part of the tourist season, during which the highest intensity of tourist traffic is expected in Croatia.

As they point out from the CNTB, good trends from the Hungarian market are confirmed by today's virtual presentation and business workshop organized by the Representation of the Croatian Tourist Board in Budapest in cooperation with the Zadar County Tourist Board. This virtual event brought together more than 110 participants, and almost 300 individual meetings will be held during the day.

"The great interest of Hungarian partners for virtual presentations and business workshops is a good indicator for the tourist season. In addition to reminding all participants of the beauties of Croatia, and especially Zadar County, we informed them about the current travel conditions between the two countries. The news of concluding a bilateral agreement between Croatia and Hungary came at the right time, and a large number of Hungarians will surely choose Croatia as their destination", said Ivana Herceg, director of the Croatian National Tourist Board in Budapest, adding that the first airline between Budapest and Zadar, which will operate twice a week from July, will also contribute to good trends.

Follow the latest on flights to Croatia HERE and the latest travel updates and COVID-19 news from Croatia HERE.

For more on travel in Croatia, follow TCN's dedicated page.

December 30, 2020 - Just like everything else in Croatia in the final days of 2020, the rules regarding crossing Croatian borders got changed today.

The police reported today that the rules are changed for those that need to get to and from the areas affected by the earthquake near Petrinja yesterday. 

According to the new rules: 

- Everyone whose house was damaged in the earthquake, who has had the official self-isolation issued in Croatia, will be allowed to leave Croatia without sanctions. This will mostly impact people from the region who live in the EU or Bosnia.

- Croatian citizens living abroad will be allowed to enter Croatia without a negative PCR test or self-isolation if their houses are damaged or they have family members in the damaged areas, in order to mitigate the damage. Those will have to prove ownership, by presenting deeds or similar documentation. 

- Any foreign humanitarian workers bringing help to Croatia will be allowed to enter Croatia without a PCR test or self-isolation, if they can prove it's really humanitarian aid going to the damaged region. Those will be directed to go to the closest Croatian Red Cross station.

Follow our live updates on the situation in the earthquake-hit areas of Croatia here; find out how you can donate here.

June 11, 2020 - Gari Cappelli interviewed with RTL Danas in Pula on Wednesday about nautical tourism, and the border openings with Hungary,  BiH and Serbia. 

RTL reports that when talking about holidays, Germans mostly google Croatia, according to the research of the Arbona agency. Croatia is far more interested in German tourists than tourists from Spain or Italy, and the keyword index vacation and Croatia is higher than 75 percent.

For RTL Danas, Boris Misevic spoke with the Minister of Tourism, Gari Capelli, about whether the tourist season is in sight.

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There are not many tourists in Pula, but there is nautical tourism.

"There are some 67,000 tourists in Croatia, and about 20,000 in Istria," Capelli said.

"The Prime Minister has agreed on all the details and the Hungarians are coming to us as early as this Friday, the border with Hungary is opening, next Monday with Austria and those dozen countries that we listed will open around June 15. We also had the right to open the most important market for us next week, which covers 55 percent of Croatia's turnover," revealed Capelli.

He revealed what happened to the borders with BiH and Serbia.

"At the level of the European Union, it has been agreed that we will open within the EU borders around June 15, and then third countries. It will certainly be open by the end of June, especially hoteliers in Makarska and this part, so they called me personally in the last few days. They insist on opening to Bosnia and Herzegovina as soon as possible because there is a lot of interest, I think that we will open the border with BiH as soon as possible, sometime around the 22nd, 23rd at the latest," Capelli said.