September the 4th, 2022 - Tourists visiting Croatia's tourist Mecca, the southernmost city of Dubrovnik, are making a return to walking the mighty Dubrovnik walls. The first normal tourist season following two coronavirus pandemic-dominated ones has so far yielded excellent results.
As Morski writes, the imposing medieval Dubrovnik walls are one of the most visited tourist attractions in Dalmatia and indeed in all of the Republic of Croatia. After two years of being dogged by the unprecedented global public health crisis, most of the country's tourism results are back to normal. The same can be said for the Dubrovnik walls, as this year the city sold twice as many tickets to those wishing to walk them as they did last year. At the same time, the Society of Friends of Dubrovnik Antiquities is busy continuing with numerous renovation projects.
There are few tourists who visit Dubrovnik and do not visit and walk the incredibly well-preserved city walls. While there is a marked increase of visitors, there are no off-putting pre-pandemic crowds and congestion that used to be such a common sight. The 1,940-metre long walk can take hours, with many stopping for panoramic images of Dubrovnik and the surrounding area that are otherwise impossible to obtain. As touched on above, during the first eight months of this year, twice as many tickets to walk the Dubrovnik walls were sold as last year. That is 60 percent of the tourist traffic from the record, pre-pandemic year of 2019. In the Society of Friends of Dubrovnik Antiquities, they aren't really focused on records and numbers but instead on sustainable tourism. That said, they are still very much satisfied with this season so far, not to mention the encouraging financial results.
''Compared to 2019, this year the entrance fee for the Dubrovnik walls was slightly higher, it was 200 kuna, and now it's 250 kuna, so these financial results are greater than the number of tickets sold,'' emphasised Vedran Kosovic, the president of the Society of Friends of Dubrovnik Antiquities.
The money from the tickets to the Dubrovnik walls is invested in the restoration of the monumental heritage in the area of the former Republic of Dubrovnik - from Orebic all the way down to Konavle, located just before the Montenegrin border. The development of less attractive tourist areas is also being started, and Dubrovnik is having life breathed back into it after two stagnant years.
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