ZAGREB, Dec 7, 2020 - Tourism Minister Nikolina Brnjac and the chairman of the national hospitality industry association, Marin Medak on Monday held talks on the challenges facing that sector, the consequences of the pandemic, legal solutions, digitisation and other topics, the ministry said in a press release.

"Until now too, through dialogue we have arrived at a series of solutions with which we are trying to save jobs in the tourism sector and related activities and today's meeting was constructive," Minister Brnjac said briefly after the meeting.

She added that last week she had met with representatives in hospitality from various parts of Croatia including the president of the hospitality association from Istria and Kvarner islands, Vedran Jakominic who is also the vice president of the national association.

Medak assessed the talks as good with the remark that they spoke about the future and less about "stopgap measures" and the current situation which "is as it is."

"Apart from the problems that we could have in the future we immediately presented the minister with solutions to some of these problems, such as urgent digitisation in hospitality and that we should be included in preparing and adopting some documents like the future sustainable tourism strategy," he said.

Medak is convinced that together they will succeed in establishing a digital platform in hospitality that will integrate all hospitality providers and their needs - supplies, sales, legal solutions, institutions and other tools that will facilitate doing business and in communication.

The delegation informed the minister of the association's initiative for a model of categorising restaurants and other hospitality premises and to call it the "kravata" (cravat).

They consider it to be essential to define the strategy in the next few months and to adopt certain amendments to the law on providing hospitality services and to update those services that they can withstands crises situation in the 21st century.

Asked whether he believed that hospitality businesses would reopen after December 21 and before Christmas, Medak said that he doesn't believe that will be possible and that the lockdown could last until the end of January.

"The thing we are still trying to negotiate with the national response team is to allow anyone who wishes to, particularly cafes, to prepare coffee to go because at the moment they aren't allowed to do even that unlike stores, petrol stations and other outlets that have that option. We'll see if we manage to succeed in that," said Medak.

ZAGREB, November 26, 2020 - The Tourism Ministry is launching the drafting of a sustainable tourism strategy until 2030 and a 2021-27 national sustainable tourism development plan as long-term frameworks for tourism development, Minister Nikolina Brnjac said at a cabinet meeting on Thursday.

The drafting of a new strategy is in line with the government's programme and the Competitive and Innovative Economy strategic goal in the draft national development strategy until 2030.

A strategic environmental impact estimate will be drawn up for the first time as part of the strategy, Brnjac said.

According to the ministry, the strategy, the plan and the estimate are expected to be drawn up by the end of 2021 and the aim is for the strategy to be coherent with other sectors' public policies.

"We have embarked on the creation of strategic frameworks so as to focus our activities as well as possible on the sustainability and development of the tourism sector, and the common goal of all actors should be the positioning of Croatia as a high quality, safe and, according to economic criteria, increasingly successful destination," said Brnjac.

February 27, 2020 - Croatian Tourism Minister Gari Cappelli comments on the coronavirus and its effects on Croatian tourism so far.

HRTurizam reports that the panic and spread of mass hysteria around the coronavirus is of no use to anyone, and many experts and scientists are calling for the voice of reason.

Today, Croatian Tourism Minister Gari Cappelli was the voice of reason at a session of the Croatian Government, stating that 24,500 tourists are currently staying in Croatia, or about 3% more guests than at the same time last year.

"There is still no major decline, except of course from the eastern markets, such as China and South Korea, as expected. In the first month, we had an increase of about 70% from the Chinese market, and now in February, a decrease of 60% was achieved, so we got closer to zero.”

As for the impact of the current situation on tourism revenue, Capelli noted that the first three months affect somewhere around 5%, while the first six months affect 27% of total tourism revenue.

“So the first three months will not have a significant impact on total tourism revenue. The biggest eventual cancellations that occur are in business and congress tourism, which is about reservations for March. Easter is earlier this year, so it won't even be a true picture of what's going to happen in the rest of the tourist season. The real picture will be shown by the situation in May, when the biggest arrivals are achieved because tourists connect holidays."

Cappelli added that in the last two years we have a new tendency in tourism through last minute bookings, i.e., our guests only book their arrival in May and June for the peak tourist season.

"So far, we do not have any cancellations for the main part of the tourist year; our markets are still stable. Positive data shows that we have a 3% increase in interest from the German market as well as from 7% to 8% in the UK this year. So for now, we do not feel any disadvantages, except for a slight halt to bookings, which was to be expected in this situation. There is no room to panic, the government headquarters manages the situation in real-time and all services are fully prepared,” Cappelli concluded.

"We need to stop any panic and big shopping trips for supplies, because we are not in this situation or at this stage at all," said Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, adding that the Government will remain 100% transparent and prompt about all relevant information to the public.

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