The current coronavirus epidemic has its grip firmly locked onto not only public health but the global economy, too. As Croatia dices with the possibility of the season being out of the window, with the pre-season certainly looking bleak, the beautiful Istrian city of Rovinj is feeling the consequences already.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes on the 16th of March, 2020, the director of the Rovinj Tourist Board, Odette Sapac, appeared on N1 and claimed that coronavirus would see Rovinj suffer losses in terms of tourism, but that it was now more important to overcome this situation than to sit counting earnings.
"We've not been in this situation before, we can't compare it with the situation back in the 1990s. This is a case of a virus infection and we all need to be persistent in order to overcome it in the best way.
At this time last year, there were about 3000 foreign visitors in Rovinj, and now there are only about 150 of them, which means that everyone, the guests, the renters and the hoteliers, have all taken the situation seriously.
It's important for us to try to keep the situation under control, to cooperate with the police and the sanitary inspection and with everyone involved in tourism, to provide them with information on how to work in accordance with these restrictive measures, we must persist in this and wait for the situation to pass.
We hope to catch one bit of the peak of the tourist season. At the moment, it's not important that the profits that will be lost, it's important that we preserve the health of our residents and that it all goes away with as little loss of life as possible,'' she concluded.
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