In spite of the extremely high temperatures in June and now in early July, the streets of Zagreb are filled with tourists, zagreb.info writes, who are breaking the tourism records of the capital.
While the most oft-repeated cliche about the shortcoming of Croatian tourism is just selling "the sun and the sea", Zagreb is successful, and it doesn't have the sea as the selling point. Without the sea around, the sun can be more of a liability when it gets really hot!
So, what has Zagreb done to make up for its obvious lack of the seaside? They've created a bunch of events taking place during the summer, that the tourist agencies can use to attract the tourists. And while Advent in Zagreb still remains the biggest tourist event for the Croatian capital, other events have helped Zagreb outgrow many other towns in Croatia, some of them located on the seaside and with a much longer tourist tradition. Zagreb has managed to find its position on the long list of the European city-break destinations, in all seasons.
The recently reported numbers prove that trend: in April of 2019 more than 10.000 more arrivals have been recorded in Zagreb, compared to April 2018. In the same period, more than 24.000 more overnight stays have also been recorded! Most tourists come to Zagreb from Korea, which is not surprising if you've recently taken a walk around the city centre. In April alone this year, they accounted for more than ten thousand arrivals. Almost seven thousand tourists came to Zagreb from Italy this April, and Germany and China follow.
The number of arrivals is continuously growing in 2019, as well as the total yearly number of arrivals since 2014! It is to be expected that the trend will continue in the really hot months of the year, as last year over 160.000 arrivals were recorded in Zagreb. A lot of those tourists do make their way to the seaside, but the tourist workers of Zagreb have found the way to keep them in the city for a few days, which is what makes those numbers so impressive.
Once the hot days of summer are over, we'll start getting ready for the craziness of Advent in Zagreb in December, which can be expected to break more tourism records.
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