Croatia is a country that offers an array of quality tourist products, excellent accommodation and a richness of diversity throughout the country.
It is our mission to bring Croatia closer to the world as a quality year-round destination and activities conducted by the Croatian Tourist Board are moving precisely in this direction, stated the Director of Croatian Tourist Board (CTB), Kristijan Staničić, for our magazine.
1. A strong tourist promotion is a necessity today if the destination wants to remain competitive on a strong international market. What are the key activities that CTB conducted to make this tourist year a success?
Appearances in numerous international expos held in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Czech and other important European markets are behind us. We also presented Croatian tourist offer on distant markets such as USA, China, Singapore and the United Arabian Emirates. Precisely the distant markets are strategically important for further development of Croatian tourism, because they post a share of around 10% in total realized foreign tourist traffic, while the rest of realized traffic refers to European markets. We are also very active on social media, where we have over 2 million fans following us, and there are also the numerous marketing and PR campaigns that we are conducting in key emissive markets. Cooperation with other international tourist subjects is also very important to us, since it helps us affect the market position of our country. As an example, I would like to mention the excellent cooperation with World Tourism Organization – UNWTO, as well as cooperation with Lonely Planet – leading global specialized travel media, BBC – one of the largest and most reputable media houses, TripAdvisor – one of the most popular global portals that is completely dedicated to the travel industry, etc. We are actively cooperating with the largest global tourist agencies, tour-operators and airline companies, and all of the above is giving results, according to the tourist traffic that goes over 100 million overnight stays, as well as the realized income that amounted to record-breaking EUR 12 billion in the previous year.
Foto: Darko Tomas / CROPIX
2. CTB’s main goal is to promote Croatian tourism and strengthen the strength of national tourist brand. How recognized is Croatia worldwide actually as a tourist destination, and how recognizable is the Croatian tourist brand?
Croatian Tourist Board is continuously monitoring the strength of the national tourist brand in eight key European emissive markets through research. These markets are Germany, Austria, Italy, Poland, UK, the Netherlands, France and Sweden. Aside from the strength of “Croatia” tourist brand, this research lets us monitor the level of brand adoption, its position in a competitive environment and the level of connecting Croatia with the features of the roof communication concept “Full of Life”. The results were positive, and brand strength indicators – familiarity, appreciation, relevance and uniqueness, posted statistically relevant positive developments in 2018. When we observe familiarity of the destination, in 2018, 72% of potential tourists in key European emissive markets recognized Croatia as a tourist destination compared to 66% in 2015. The slogan “Croatia, Full of Life” recorded an upward trend since 2015. Namely, in 2018, 77% of tourists considered that the slogan “Croatia, Full of Life” suits Croatia as a tourist destination, compared to 2015 when this level was 66%.
If we observe the motives and reasons for visiting Croatia, the sun and the sea are still the main motives, but we should point out that this motive’s share has dropped significantly from 68% to 57%, while the share of other motives for a visit rises at the same time. We can conclude that a significant progress has been achieved in the positioning of Croatia as a country with a diverse tourist offer, i.e. a destination that offers different possibilities for a vacation.
3. Considering the results achieved in pre-season and expectations by the end of the year, can you give an estimate of what kind if results we can expect by the end of 2019?
In the previous part of the year, about 3.6 million arrivals were realized in Croatia, which represents an increase of 3 percent in relation to the same period last year. We are slowly entering the main part of the tourist year. Our goal is to continue to strengthen the traffic in pre- and post-season, to strengthen the visibility of Croatia as a tourist destination and to increase tourist consumption. We want to reach new customers and bring new guests to Croatia. The goal for this year is to achieve excellent tourism results from the previous year – with a slight increase.