Last year’s record-breaking year for tourism in Croatia, when 18.5 million tourists created 102 million overnight stays, is set to be broken this year after the statistics for the first five months of 2018 were released today.

According to the eVisitor system, in the first five months of 2018, a total of 3.6 million tourists have visited Croatia, up 19% from the same period last year. Overnight stays were up 22% to 2.9 million.

The month of May has been an extremely busy one with 1.7 million arrivals in the month, which was 30% more than in May 2017. Overnight stays in May were up 39% from last year.

The most tourists to arrive in Croatia so far in 2018 came from Germany (2.5 million overnights), followed by Austria (1.1 million overnights), Slovenia, UK, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The most popular destination so far this year has been the Istria region, followed by Kvarner and Split-Dalmatia county. Zadar region was next with Sibenik-Knin close behind.

“We are happy with this year’s results which show we have achieved high double-digit growth in tourist traffic. It confirms that our digital campaigns, marketing and PR activities on foreign markets, implemented with the goal of positioning Croatia as a year-round destination, are very well accepted. We will continue to cooperate with key foreign and domestic partners in attracting guests out of the summer part of the tourist year as one of our strategic goals,” said Croatian Tourist Board Director Kristjan Stanicic.

Croatian Minister of Tourism, Gari Cappelli, is particularly happy with the results over the last two years.

“Toursim is up in Croatia more than 35% from two years ago. This is proof that our past activities have produced excellent results, but also how tourism does not happen by itself, but how to make great progress with the continuous work on increasing the quality and creating new offers very quickly. I believe that these results will have a positive impact on the continued growth of tourism revenues and will be an incentive for everyone to continue to build the success of Croatian tourism together,” Cappelli said.