May 26, 2022 - The 2022 Korčula summer season is expected to catch the record 2019, with the return of many cultural events, a revamped ACI marina, and the soon-to-open Pelješac bridge. 

Korčula has already recorded an excellent pre-season with figures better than the record 2019. All local governments on the island are growing, bookings are crazy, caterers and renters are satisfied, and a hellish season awaits them, reports Slobodna Dalmacija.

Expectations for a good start to the pre-season in Korčula town have been justified, said the director of the Korčula Tourist Board, Hana Turudić. Compared to April and the first week of May 2019, Korčula has 25 percent fewer arrivals and overnight stays, which are very good numbers and indicators of a successful season, Hana Turudić is convinced. Most guests are still from Croatia and Slovenia, followed by travelers from the USA, Great Britain, and Germany, and markets that have slowed down in the last two years and are looking forward to returning. With no restrictions in place, the possibility of holding numerous events that were called off in the previous two years is now a reality. Following the traditions of the famous Korčula Vela setemana, the 12th Marco Polo Challenge was successfully held, the Croatian Championship in Medium-Long Triathlon, and the Asparagus Festival, Fortress Night, and the Kumpanji Klapa concert on May 1.

"Of great importance are the completed works in the ACI Marina Korčula, which welcomes this season with full capacity and numerous catamaran lines that connect the city of Korčula with Split and Dubrovnik and the islands of Lastovo, Hvar, and Mljet. The Pelješac Bridge opening will be a turning point for further development. In addition, we are announcing numerous events, from the Festival of Knightly Games, classical and popular music concerts, music festivals, the Korčula Baroque Festival and Lost in the Renaissance, food and wine festival Korčula Pjatance, and many other events," announced Turudić.

Lumbarda has recorded excellent numbers, too, and the pre-season recorded an increase of 175 percent in overnight stays compared to last year, but 3 percent more than the pre-pandemic 2019. The director of the Lumbarda Tourist Board, Ante Šestanović, said most guests are Slovenes, followed by the Swiss, French, Norwegians, and Irish. Most of the tourist traffic, more than 41 percent, took place in private accommodation, and they stay for almost a week during the pre-season!

The Municipality of Blato recorded a 25 percent increase in arrivals and overnight stays in the first four months of 2022 compared to 2019. Croats are the most numerous in Blato, followed by Slovenes and guests from BiH and Poland.

"What is worth mentioning is that visitors perceive our island as a destination for a pleasant and quality vacation, and despite all the challenges, expectations for the upcoming season are certainly positive," announced Blato Tourist Board director Maja Separovic.

Several traditional events are planned and held this pre-season at the Blato Tourist Board, starting with the successful traditional gastronomic event Tastes and Scents of the Homeland - Easter Fair in Blato. Then, from mid-May, there are specially designed gastronomic tours for visitors and the local population, to whom they will present local winemakers and producers of traditional lumblija cake.

The Vela Luka Tourist Board director, Dorjan Dragojević, is more than satisfied with the results, especially with overnight stays and arrivals in April, which are 65 percent better than last year.

"Hotel Korkyra has opened, and private accommodation is slowly filling up. Given the good bookings, we expect even better tourist numbers in the future, which we are currently planning at the level of 2019," announced Dragojević.

Although last year's season was excellent for Orebić, this year they are announcing an even better one, primarily due to the Pelješac Bridge opening, and the current figures prove it.

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

June 13, 2020 - Tourism has been on hold, but most of us have plenty of time. So let's look at the virtual resources available to explore Croatia virtually. We continue our new Virtual Croatia series with the tools to discover Lumbarda on Korcula.

A few weeks ago I wrote that being a tourism blogger in the corona era was about as useful as being a cocktail barman in Saudi Arabia. I feel less useless now, a few weeks later, and I am encouraged by the number of Croatian tourism businesses who are contacting us wanting to start thinking of promoting post-corona tourism. 

One of the challenges of writing about tourism at the moment is that there is nothing positive to write about. With people confined to their homes and tourism in Croatia currently not possible, many have decided to go into hibernation until it is all over. 

I think that this is a mistake, and I have greatly enjoyed the TCN series by Zoran Pejovic of Paradox Hospitality on thinking ahead to tourism in a post-corona world.  You can find Zoran's articles here.

Way back on March 14 - several lifetimes ago - I published an article called Tourism in the Corona Age: 10 Virtual Ways to Discover Zagreb. The way I saw things, now was an OUTSTANDING opportunity for tourism promotion. People have time, they yearn for their freedom and former lives, so give them the tools to thoroughly research and enjoy your destinations, and you will have then longing to be there. And when they do come, they will have a deeper understanding of the destination due to their research. 

South Africa and Portugal were the first to do their post-corona tourism promotion videos several weeks ago (Post-Corona Tourism Planning: Lessons from South Africa and Portugal), a trick which has been followed by other tourism countries, the latest being Croatia with the national tourist board campaign, #CroatiaLongDistanceLove, going live yesterday.

But while these campaigns create longing and market presence, they don't really educate. People now have time to really get into destinations. And dreams of escape to somewhere more exotic are high on the list of priorities of many. 

So TCN has decided to help with that education with a new series called Virtual Croatia, where we will be helping you discover many of Croatia's destinations with all the best virtual tools available on your self-isolating sofa at home. 

We started last week with Tourism in the Corona Age: 10 Virtual Tools to Discover Hvar.

After this, we put our a press release (which you can read here in English and Croatian) offering a free article to any local tourist board in Croatia who would like the free promotion in our Virtual Croatia series. 

The Sinj Tourist Board was the first to respond, and now you can see just how rich the tourism offer is in this proud Alka town - your virtual tools to Discover Sinj. This was followed by DIscover Opatija, Discover Brela, Discover Rogoznica, Discover Klis, Discover Trogir, Discover Omis, and Discover Stari Grad.

Next up, Ante Šestanović from the Lumbarda Tourist Board, who sent me some virtual tools to help us discover Lumbarda. 

Let's begin! 

Welcome to Lumbarda, Home to Thousands of Years of History and Beauty

Lumbarda, a small settlement on the south-western coast of the island of Korcula, is one of the true idyllic gems on the Adriatic. Winner of the prestigious 2019 Vecernji List Tourist Patrol award, Lumbarda is far more than just a sun and sea destination, and its history and wine story is truly unique. 

In 1877 Božo Kršinić, a local Lumbardian, found on top of a small hill called Koludrt, the Psephisma of Lumbarda. Dating from 3rd or 4th century BC this inscription carved into a stone pillar, provided details about a Greek colony living in Lumbarda who originated from the island of Issa, today’s Vis Island. The Psephisma includes the names of 200 Greek families and the agreement between themselves and the Illyrians who had already settled in the area. It contractual agreed terms for the establishment of the new colony by the Greeks and the division of land. As one of the earliest discovered documents in Croatia, it provides valuable information about the Greek colonists, as well as the democratic way the people divided the land and harmoniously lived side by side. Learn more in the Story Behind the Logo. 

Now get to know the beauty of Lumbarda through various promotional videos.

A tranquil destination of sun, sea, beach and chilled lifestyle. 

An oasis of calm, where you can escape the pressures of the modern world.

A great escape for an active holiday, or a lazy one at the beach.

Lumbarda from the Air

We live in the era of the drone, one more tool to show the magnificence of Lumbarda from the air. 

Discover Lumbarda and Its Wine Champion - Grk

Korcula is a great wine island, famous mostly for its Posip, but also for a very sought-after white wine variety which only grows on the sandy soil of Lumbarda - Grk. There are only about 33,000 bottles a year made, but it is one of the premier white wines of Croatia. One of my favourite (and true) stories about Croatia happened several years ago, when one of the powerful Kennedy family from the USA tasted Grk in a top Dubrovnik hotel. The next day they were on a yacht to Korcula, met the winemaker and tasted his range. They ordered two pallets of Grk. 

"I am sorry," replied the winemaker, but we have a policy of selling just two bottles per customer, as we only have a limited supply."

"Don't you know who I am? I am a Kennedy, and I would like two pallets."

"I do indeed, Sir, but I am Mr. Grk. Two bottles only."

The Beaches of Lumbarda

Lumbarda has great beaches. If anyone has better videos on YouTube, please send me the links, and I will update. The city beach. 

The kids beach.

An Active Lumbarda Holiday

Laze on the beach, or get active. Sailing the Dalmatian islands is a popular way to relax on an Adriatic holiday. Meet the Lumbarda marina.  

Kayaking has grown in popularity in Dalmatia in recent years, a popular activity in Lumbarda. 

Why not try a buggy safari for something a little different? 

Or some coast hiking, perhaps?

The island of Korcula is a great cycling destination, and Lumbarda is a key part of that. 

Traditional Lumbarda, a Destination of Klapa, Folklore, Fishermen's Nights & Donkey Racing 

It may be a small destination, but Lumbarda maintains plenty of traditions, including the popular Fishermen's Nights.

And where would Dalmatia be without that romantic traditional singing - met Klapa Korda.

There are also regular displays of Lumbarda traditional folklore.

And don't miss the epic Lumbarda donkey races. 

And, for something equally romantic at night, sky lanterns. 

Lumbarda as It Once Was (1970) 

Step back in time. Lumbarda as It Once Was, some 50 years ago.  

Rick Stein and BBC Discovers the Gourmet Secrets of Lumbarda

And the secret is slowly getting out. Rick Stein and the BBC were delighted with the gourmet treasures of Lumbarda, where they filmed for a series on the BBC back in 2016. 

Timelapse Lumbarda

Enjoy the magnificence of Lumbarda through timelapse, both the centre and the beach. 

Official Lumbarda Tourist Board Website

Discover Lumbarda via the official tourist board website.

THIS. IS. LUMBARDA. When can we expect your visit? 

To discover more of virtual Croatia, you can follow this series in our dedicated section, Virtual Croatia. 

If you are a local tourist board in Croatia and would like your destination featured in this series for free, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Subject Virtual Croatia (and destination name)

Just like TCN's owner, Paul Bradbury, I too am very interested in statistics and the numbers that appeared after the elections like yesterday's Croatian runoff of the presidential elections 2020.

But, unlike Paul, who was aiming to analyse the big picture of what the data was telling us about Croatian politics and the population, I was looking for the weird and the bizarre. It started yesterday evening when I was browsing around Croatia, looking at the State Electoral Commission site and the results that were shown there as the votes were counted. One of the things I noticed was that Lumbarda, a village on Korčula island, a municipality with just one polling station, was split right down the middle: both Zoran Milanović and Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović got 271 votes in Lumbarda!

Then I was told an unofficial piece of information that Žrnovo, another village on Korčula, 10 kilometres away from Lumbarda, was also divided perfectly between the candidates! I wasn't able to verify that right away, but as soon as I got my hands on the full spreadsheet of the results of presidential elections 2020, published today by the Electoral Commission, that was the first thing I checked. And, yes, they were right, polling station no. 4 in Korčula municipality, located in Žrnovo, had the result 303:303.

Of course, when you have 2 candidates, it's not at all surprising that there will be situations where the number of votes per polling station would be exactly the same. But I had to go and find out, how many were there? Lumbarda is the only municipality in Croatia that really doesn't know who they'd prefer for Croatian president. Other ties happened at the level of polling stations, and there were exactly 44 of them. About a dozen of those were in Zagreb County, a few in the City of Zagreb, a few in Bjelovar-Bilogora County and a couple in each of the remaining counties (the two on Korčula are the only ones in Dubrovnik-Neretva County). Oh, there's another one: in the Croatian Embassy in Finland, in Helsinki, 5 people voted for Zoran Milanović, while 5 other Finnish Croats voted for Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović!

Most of the total votes were cast at several polling stations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Zagreb and one in Kastav. On the other side of that spectrum is a polling station in Vladisovo in Brod-Posavina County, located in a private house, where two people voted: one of the ballots was invalid, while the other person voted for Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović!

To find out more about the results and see graphical representations of them, visit viborc.com, who also helped me handle the data for this article.

August 12, 2019 - Congratulations to Lumbarda, winners of this year's Vecernji List Tourism Patrol award. 

A nice boost for tourism in Lumbarda on Korcula, which has won the prestigious Tourism Patrol award, Croatia's oldest tourism award, organised by newspaper Vecernji List since 1975. Vecernji reporters visit all the major destinations incognito and assess the quality of the tourism offer of each destination, before announcing a champion. Winners from 2013-2018 were Vis, Trogir, Split, Dubrovnik, Zadar and Korcula Town.

Lumbarda is known for its great beaches, relaxed lifestyle and one of Croatia's finest white wine grape varieties, Grk. TCN last year reported on the top 5 things to do in Lumbarda. 

In recent years, Korculan tourism has been focused on quality and not quantity, and the results are already being seen in a much higher level of tourism offer, as well as recognition. Although I haven't fact-checked, this is possibly the first time that the Tourism Patrol award has remained on the same island two years in a row. 

Take a tour of the destination with the Lumbarda Tourist Board in the video above. 

To learn more about the island, check out the Total Croatia Korcula in a Page guide. 

May 9, 2019 - Putting Croatian adventure tourism on the map, with the biggest welcome in the world. Day 48 of this incredible 2011 adrenaline trip covering 2,500 km along the Croatian coast. 

The World's Biggest Welcome, an ambitious adventure tourism project in 2011 in Croatia enters Day 48 of this 2019 appreciation of one of the finest tourism promotion projects ever in Croatia.  

The plan? To showcase the diversity and fabulous offer of adventure tourism in Croatia by following a GPS route the length of the Croatian coast in the shape of the word 'Welcome' - thereby creating the biggest welcome in the world from a hospitable tourism country. 

Day 48 moved from Lumbarda to Ston. 

49 kilometres for the day: 21 km kayak ride from Lumbarda to Žuljana, followed by 26 km bike ride from Žuljana to Ston and 2 km walking the Ston walls to begin forming the ‘E’ in ‘Welcome’.

Lacko begins Day 48 and the start of the letter 'E' from Lumbarda. 

Lacko rowing towards Pelješac.

Saying goodbye to Korčula. 

And the islands that sit in front of it.

Lacko arrived at Žuljana on Pelješac.

"Old friends meet again."

The group then made their way to Ston for a walk around the walls of Ston, the second longest defense walls in the world (after the Great Wall in China).

They might look familiar to you. 

The team taking on the walls. 

The view of Ston and the salt pans.

The salt pans were actually the reason the walls had to be built.

The Mali Ston bay and the most famous mussel farm in Croatia.

And the day ended with Lacko blog writing.

A key part of the project was promoting tourism, and the official website has details of the key places visited during the day. 

You can see the entire project on the Welcome website, as well as much more of Luka Tambaca's stunning photography on the Welcome Facebook page. 

Tune in tomorrow for Day 49, as Lacko moves from Ston to Ploče.

To follow the whole project from the start, follow the dedicated TCN page. 

May 8, 2019 - Putting Croatian adventure tourism on the map, with the biggest welcome in the world. Day 47 of this incredible 2011 adrenaline trip covering 2,500 km along the Croatian coast. 

The World's Biggest Welcome, an ambitious adventure tourism project in 2011 in Croatia enters Day 47 of this 2019 appreciation of one of the finest tourism promotion projects ever in Croatia.  

The plan? To showcase the diversity and fabulous offer of adventure tourism in Croatia by following a GPS route the length of the Croatian coast in the shape of the word 'Welcome' - thereby creating the biggest welcome in the world from a hospitable tourism country. 

Day 47 moved from Lovište to Lumbarda.

68 kilometres for the day: 20 km kayak ride from Lovište to Blato, followed by 33 km by bike from Blato to the bottom of Klupca, and a 15 km kayak ride from the bottom of Klupca to Lumbarda to complete forming the ‘M’ in ‘Welcome’.

Sajko and Lacko sett off from Lovište towards Korcula.

Maneuvering around the boat.

And the deep shadows in the sea.

Marko snapping Korčula in the distance.

Babina - Tea, Sajko and Lacko arriving at the island of Korčula. 

In Babina, the team switched from kayaks to bicycles and carried on pedaling down the main road.

Cedo investigating narrow passages between cliffs.

The team encountered Kocje, a beautiful and unusual protected park near Zrnovo. It is special for its labyrinth of cliffs and vegetation.

Korčula town.

And Mislav riding through the streets of the town.

The team made it to Lumbarda.

For a pleasant sail.

And a view of Pelješac.

A Lumbarda swim on one of the islands, with St. Ilija, the highest peak of Pelješac, in the background.

The team explored the Lumbarda streets.

And Grk, the indigenous grape variety from the sandy plantations of Lumbarda.

And the town in all of its glory.

A key part of the project was promoting tourism, and the official website has details of the key places visited during the day. 

Lumbarda.

You can see the entire project on the Welcome website, as well as much more of Luka Tambaca's stunning photography on the Welcome Facebook page. 

Tune in tomorrow for Day 48, as Lacko moves from Lumbarda to Ston.

To follow the whole project from the start, follow the dedicated TCN page. 

ZAGREB, March 11, 2019 - A series of events dedicated to Lumbarda Psephisma, a stone inscription about the founding of an Ancient Greek settlement on the southern Croatian island of Korčula, will start on 13 March, and includes nine lectures about the archaeological heritage of the municipality of Lumbarda located on the eastern tip of the island.

A hundred and forty years ago, segments of the monument were discovered, which represents the founding document for the establishment of a colony which was set up by the Greeks from the nearby island of Vis, at around the 3rd century BC, the head of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb, Sanjin Mihelić said on Monday while presenting the findings of the current archaeological activities on Korcula and results of the reconstruction of the monument.

Lumbarda Psephisma is the oldest stone inscription found on Croatian soil. It also contains information about the allotment of land among the then Greek settlers on the island of Korčula.

Next spring, the Zagreb museum will prepare an exhibition about this matter in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, and the event has been prepared within the bilateral cooperation between Croatia and Greece.

That exhibition about Lumbarda Psephisma will be the culmination of cultural cooperation during Croatia's chairmanship of the European Union in the first half of 2020.

Greek Ambassador to Croatia, Stavros Tsiepas, congratulated the Zagreb museum's director and the team of archaeologists and researchers engaged in the digs and presentation of the relevant finds.

More news about Korčula can be found in the Lifestyle section.

 A new blog about living in Croatia, with more than a hint of wine. Meet Croatia Draga, and the first in a three-part series exploring the wine towns of Korčula.

"Going to Korčula to meet its winemakers requires a drive to one of the island’s three main wine towns: Lumbarda, Smokvica and Čara. (Although there are worthy wineries outside these towns, I didn’t visit them this trip.) From Korčula town, Lumbarda is the closest, just a 10-minute drive to the easternmost end of the island. The famous sandy vineyards there are centered on a narrow peninsula that is bracketed on the two coasts by town beaches and leads to a mostly wooded knob on the tip of the island. Driving past the small riva at the center of town, you are almost immediately in the vineyards. You reach a tiny roundabout occupied by a tiny church and can follow the one-lane road through vines that spread in every direction."

To read the full article, click here.

Whenever Lumbarda and Vela Pržina beach are mentioned, Bilin Žal also makes an appearance, and it's most certainly worth a visit.

As we've previously written, a sensational find earlier this year  brought us closer to having the full document.