April the 2nd, 2022 - A brand new Sukosan hotel and campsite is ''brewing'', with a 1000 bed capacity and high hopes for the tourist season.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, in the area of ​​Tustica, just outside the settlement of Sveti Petar towards Sukosan, a brand new hotel and campsite with a capacity of 1000 beds will be built, along with various beach facilities, a promenade, one berth and mooring availability for 200 boats. The above was published on the official website of Sveti Filip i Jakov.

“The new urban development plan (UPU) of the catering/hospitality and tourist zone is extremely important for the residents of Sveti Petar, on which we've been working intensively for the past couple of years. After getting the green light from the Ministry of Physical Planning, Construction and State Property, UPU was unanimously accepted by the Council, which will significantly affect the better standard of local residents, especially when it comes to demographic renewal,'' said Mayor Pelicaric in conversation with Slobodna Dalmacija.

Amendments to the UPU were made by the company Volat from Posedarje, and the brand new zone will include micro-destinations (Babac, Rastane Donje, Rastane Gornje, Sikovo, Sv. Filip i Jakov, Sveti Petar na Moru and Turanj) which will thus be able to develop in a far better way in terms of tourism. The building land includes the northeastern part of the catering/hospitality and touristic area near the Adriatic Highway and a recreation zone with a mooring and a beach in the southwestern part.

"The new Sukosan hotel and the campsite are being planned to be within the economic zone for catering/hospitality and tourist purposes, while in the recreation zone, a well-kept sea beach and mooring availabilities are being planned. The catering/hospitality and tourist zone also includes a unit for the construction of a new hotel with a minimum of four stars in the western part and a zone for the construction of a campsite in the eastern part, while the accommodation capacities of the catering/hospitality and tourist zone is 1000 beds in both hotel and camp facilities.

In the T1 hospitality and tourism zone, at least 70 percent of the accommodation units must be within the new hotel building, and a maximum of 30 percent in the annexes. Within the zone covered by the plan, it is mandatory that we build an intersection and two underpasses for the needs of public pedestrian access to the coastal part and the planned road access to the port," he stressed.

In addition to all of the above, within the spatial unit T3, the construction of a new campsite is planned, and all of the necessary facilities for the complete provision of services in that spatial unit must be realised on the planned building plot.

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December the 15th, 2021 - Faithful German tourists who were among the first to pack their famous motorhomes and hit the road to Croatia following the lifting of lockdown measures have praised Croatian campsites. There is, however, still one thing missing in their view...

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, although Croatian campsites have an offer that, in terms of all categories of quality and content, significantly differs from the European average, the unimpressive vaccination rate across the country and high mortality throughout the COVID-19 pandemic here in Croatia could cost this sector and the entire tourism industry next season, especially when it comes to the German market, as shown by an analysis from the popular German car club ADAC.

This is important now because reservations for next summer are already coming in for Croatian campsites, and an additional problem for Croatian campsites is that currently only 46 percent of them can be booked. ''Others need to wake up and make an effort to become more visible online,'' warned Uwe Frers, the CEO of Pincamp, ADAC’s booking portal for campsites.

His portal is otherwise the most important campsite search engine in the entire German market with six million unique users in Germany, whose importance is all the greater given that camping is generally not advertised or sold on major online platforms such as Booking.com.

“Pincamp's analysis showed that an automatic and flexible cancellation policy (42 percent) and applications with an alarm about the current conditions under which travel can be key to raising confidence in travel over the next twelve months. If you don't announce your cancellation policy now, you could lose guests who would like to come to Croatian campsites. Don't wait for others to announce theirs before you do, because an interested guest would rather seize the first opportunity,'' said Frers from the Congress of Croatian Camping, which took place in Tuhelj at the end of last week.

Pincamp has nothing but pure praise for Croatian campsites, even in the last turbulent year the availability of online booking has increased from 24 percent to 46 percent, and it is important for guests to book a pitch in advance. For comparison, in Austria, a place can be reserved for the next season in 88 percent of camps, and in 63 percent of camps in Slovenia. In this respect, Croatia is on a par with Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, although these are significantly larger markets.

''For even better sales next season, it is important for Croatian campsites to simplify their prices as much as possible, to calculate all of the additional costs. In terms of quality and content, Croatian campsites can hardly be much better than they are now,'' praised Frers.

This ADAC analysis show edthat Croatian campsites have on average 11 percent better quality in terms of their pitches than average European campsites, meaning that Croatia is 37 percent better than the average in terms of bathing facilities (sea, swimming pools, aquaparks), and 20 percent better in terms of entertainment and similar content.

As many as 43 percent of average Croatian campsites have better ADAC ratings for shopping and restaurant facilities, but safety security could prove to be a problem, although the campsites themselves are not to blame.

"Safety is very important for the Germans in choosing a destination for next year, and they're closely following the news and statistics, coronavirus incidence is very important to them, as is the vaccination rate. This is where Croatia comes off quite badly when compared to competitors across the Mediterranean, such as Italy, France, Spain... and you must be aware that this is the signal you're sending out to your potential guests. Please send out a good message to German tourists,'' warned Uwe Frers in conclusion.

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ZAGREB, 14 Dec 2021 - The German ADAC automobile club included three Croatian campsites in the list of top ten European campsites -- the Aminess Maravea Camping Resort from Novigrad, Camping Omišalj on Krk, and the Zaton Holiday Resort near Nin/Zadar, the Croatian Tourist Board (HTZ) said on Monday.

ADAC released its new list dedicated to camping on its website. Croatia's Aminess Maravea and Omišalj ranked third and fourth, while Zaton Holiday was sixth.

Croatia was second in terms of campsites' popularity with 26 campgrounds in the ranking, behind Germany with 53 and ahead of Italy with 18 campsites.

ADAC is our most important strategic partner and cooperating with them is of the highest priority to Croatia's long-term favorable and secure position on the German market. The basis for future cooperation is also the Memorandum of Understanding, signed at this year's Croatian Tourism Days, making all ADAC sales and marketing channels available to all tourism entities in Croatia, said the head of HTZ's Munich office, Nera Miličić.

She also said that in more than 150 ADAC branches in Germany, sales agents would soon receive training on Croatia's diverse offer in order to be better prepared for booking trips on the German market.

The HTZ also carried the statement of ADAC president and director of the tourism department, Karlheinz Jungbeck, who underscored that Croatia was one of the favorite foreign destinations of Germans and that Germany was the most important market for Croatian tourism.

He said cooperation with Croatia was very good and announced they would also prepare joint activities for the 2022 f.re.e. fair for travel in Munich, when Croatia would also be a partner country of the event.

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September the 24th, 2021 - The height of the summer season in Croatia might well be behind us now, but the post-season remains and it seems that the tourists just keep on coming. Croatian campsites have performed excellently, with both foreign and local guests appearing to have deeper pockets than before.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, this year, Croatian campsites have so far surpassed other segments of tourist accommodation - not only has the cumulative turnover from 2019 been more or less reached, but for the first time in history, Croatian campsites have reached the end of September with a very high level of occupancy.

Although this result can be partly interpreted through these unusual pandemic-induced circumstances, in addition to the longer season for camping, there are several other trends that should continue. These are a significant increase in tourists coming from the Polish and Czech markets, as well as the return of domestic guests camping in cooler weather.

Expectations have been well and truly exceeded...

“Although each accommodation segment has its own role and position on the wider market, we can truly say that Croatian campsites have been stars, and not only this year. With small differences between regions, year-round campsites have managed to reach about 90 percent of the overnight stays they realised back in 2019, which is far better than the plan from the start of the season, which foresaw around 60 to 70 percent of pre-pandemic traffic. We have to keep in mind that we had a really late start to the season, too,'' revealed Adriano Palman, the director of the Croatian Camping Association.

As early as the beginning of June, there were a lot of bookings in Croatian campsites until September, without a lot of last minute bookings, and prices were moving towards the 2019 level. The peak of the summer season, as it did in other segments, went well. Palman stated that those with lower traffic achieved 2.6 times more overnight stays than last year, and those with the best results tripled last year's traffic, which means that the entire segment was extremely successful, with slightly lower traffic in the southernmost Dubrovnik region, otherwise the country's tourist Mecca.

What differs from previous years is the extremely high occupancy levels that Croatian campsites enjoyed through September so far, until last weekend. Only this week have the camps been slowly emptying, and a good forecast for next weekend will surely motivate some to extend things for a few more days. According to statistics from the eVisitor system, Croatian campsites managed to realise a massive 2.3 million overnight stays from September the 1st to the 19th this year (on 324 thousand arrivals), which is as much as 24 percent more than in the record year of 2019 (18 percent more in arrivals).

"We interpret this on the one hand by saying that the season was ''late'', and some of the guests postponed their holidays. In addition, some guests simply wanted to take advantage of the fact that there are no travel restrictions yet and wanted to treat themselves to some camping. In any case, guests from September are important for camps because their primary motive for travelling is not the sun and the sea, although in September it's still quite warm, but instead they want to visit local attractions, eat at restaurants, visit family farms, go to wineries, and go cycling. Such guests contribute more to strengthening the local economy,'' noted Palman.

On top of that, traffic in Croatian campsites on the continent has increased significantly this year as well, despite still being in the coast's shadow. But the fact is that there are more and more of campsites in continental Croatia and that they attract more and more guests, especially locals, who like to visit them throughout the year. There are more and more camps staying open all year round, too.

Although the most numerous guests of the camps are still Germans, Slovenes and Austrians, this year, guests from the Netherlands returned to the fourth place contrary to expectations, and the only ones who significantly failed in this segment are the Italians.

A brand new structure

"We have two markets that have significant growth and a change in the structure of guests, and represent great potential to which we'd like to cater, namely the Poles and the Czechs. These guests have always come to Croatia, but in previous years they were ''simple’''guests, and with a rise in standards, they moved from the south, primarily from the Makarska Riviera, up further north, with increasingly expensive cars and camping equipment,'' revealed Palman.

Also, although in small numbers, the number of Croatia tourists is growing, and they began visiting different places in Croatia when travel was much more restricted, so they're also visiting camps on the Adriatic and in the continental part of the country. Domestic guests, for example, have been filling up mobile homes throughout the past year, using numerous weekend promotions.

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