Italy has always been one of the most important markets for Croatian tourism, for example only last year Croatia realized more than a million arrivals from Italy.
As Ferragosto approaches and as Italians are getting ready for their holidays, Croatia came in focus of various Italian media which emphasize that our country has preserved its authenticity, ambiance and traditional way of life and laud our quality gastronomy, as well as very attractive festival offer for young Italians.
“Over 450 thousand arrivals and more than 1.7 million overnight stays have been realized from the Italian market for the past year. But the most intense traffic is yet to come, with our proactive approach and thoughtful PR and marketing activities we have animated potential Italian tourists to choose Croatian destinations for their holiday. There has been a lot of work for the past year through social networks, as well as special presentations that helped us successfully reach the young Italian population ” said the director of Croatian Tourist Board Kristjan Staničić adding that the improvement of traffic connections between Italy and Croatia is a stimulating factor for the growth of tourist traffic from this market.
“Italian media are great fans and friends of Croatia and are always happy to write about our destinations and tourist offer. We are particularly pleased to see a significant increase in the interest of key Italian bloggers and influencers who have a large number of followers and who want to visit Croatia. It is this kind of co-operation that will be in even greater focus when planning activities for 2019” commented Viviana Vukelić, director of the Croatian Tourist Board representative office in Italy.
Croatia’s popularity among Italian media can be seen by looking at numerous articles published in their most popular magazines. Tourist magazine Marco Polo devoted its cover to Primošten and Šibenik-Knin and Zadar counties. Caravan e camper published story of coming back to Dubrovnik in which they describe current tourist offer of the city. Cosmopolitan explored our beaches, while Italian Vogue published an article about island Vis.
It is also interesting that the Italian travel search engine Skyscanner.it analyzed the search results for flights from Italy to the countries that entered quarterfinals of the recent World Cup Belgium, France, Croatia and England, in order to determine “the winner” as selected by Italian travellers. Croatia won this “competition” with a total 5 out of 10 cities in the rankings. The cities with the largest growth in the number of searches were Zagreb, Zadar, Pula, Dubrovnik and Split.