"The trend will continue in the years ahead of us, and people from Western and Northern Europe will be coming to Dalmatia more.”
At the Fair of Indigenous Products at Prokurative, Joško Stella, the Director of the Tourist Board of the Split-Dalmatia County, said his piece on the 2018 tourism year, reports Dalmacija Danas on May 1, 2018.
Stella first emphasized that hosting such fairs are very important.
"The Tourist Board of Split-Dalmatia County works continuously for education in Inland Dalmatia about rural tourism. This year, we will also have a Congress of Rural Tourism that will be held in Supetar in May. The event co-organizers are the Split-Dalmatia County and the Tourist Board of Split Dalmatia County and we will do this with the goal of linking everything rural - agriculture and tourism.”
Some coastal destinations are bitter that Inland Dalmatia has seen more tourists this spring.
“They do not have to complain, they have to be happy. What is happening in Inland Dalmatia is the pre-season. Because of the villas in Imotski, tourism happens before the coast itself. This is great because it is another kind of tourism and it cannot be compared. The coast compares their results and complains that they have no pre-season results like Inland Dalmatia, but they need to be even better.”
How is tourism looking in Dalmatia?
“Strong growth has been recorded. Specifically, for the first three months, we had 25% more overnights, which is 10,000 more overnights. We are talking about 270,000 overnight stays in total. These are not huge figures, but the percentage increase is large. The largest increase we have seen in guests from Scandinavia, and especially Sweden, where the number of tourists has increased by 700%! People from these countries have realized that the summer comes a lot earlier here, took advantage of the opportunity, good prices and good discounts, and came. It is a trend that will continue in the years ahead of us, and people from Western and Northern Europe will be coming to Dalmatia more and more. We are encouraging activities to attract them. For example, cyclotourism is one of those activities we are intensively working on. In addition to having the largest number of marked trails, we have two world fairs, we had the Tour of Croatia, we had the Bahrain Merida training on Hvar ... The results show that the number of cycling journalists increased by 200 to 300 percent in relation to last year in Croatia,” Stella said, adding that this is an indicator of great interest for the pre and postseason.
