Page 12 - bne_newspaper_September_28_2018

Southeast Europe
September 28, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 12
Croatia’s summer season disappoints as tourists return to Turkey and Egypt
Clare Nuttall in Bucharest
Croatia benefitted when concerns over terrorism and political unrest kept tourists away from rival destinations like Turkey and Egypt. Now these fears have receded, leading to a bumper year for the two East Mediterranean destinations and a small drop in the numbers visiting Croatia.
This is bad news for the world’s most tourist de- pendent economy. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), tourism’s total contribution (direct and indirect) to Croatia’s 2017 GDP was 25% and one in 10 jobs in the country’s are dependent on the tourism industry.
The inflows of tourists have been so great in re- cent years that Croatia has started complaining of over-tourism, especially in the historic walled city of Dubrovnik, one of the locations in the hit HBO se- ries Game of Thrones which has been swamped by tourists, many of them arriving in their thousands on cruise ships. This prompted the city’s mayor to mull restrictions on visitor numbers last year, while Za- greb has announced plans to increase its tourist tax.
This year, however, there has been handwringing about the opposite problem, with an estimated 200,000 empty hotel beds along the Adriatic Rivi- era according to local media.
The dip in tourist arrivals hasn’t been huge: numbers were down a modest 0.5% y/y in July, data from the state statistics office shows, while they rose by 3.2% in June before the peak tourist season started. And Croatia continues to outstrip
The authorities in the historic city of Dubrovnik complained of over-tourism, but visitor numbers in Croatia are down slightly this July.
its neighbours in the Western Balkans in terms of the sheer number of arrivals, with almost 4.1mn coming to the country in July, which is more than Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Macedonia, Mon- tenegro, Serbia and Slovenia put together.
But it still highlights that Croatia’s recent tour- ism boom was partly fuelled by the security fears surrounding rival destinations. The Adriatic coun- try wasn’t alone in having a disappointing July. In Spain, the number of visiting tourists fell during the month for the first time in nine years, follow- ing half a decade of rapid growth. Reuters reports that hotels and package tour operators are cut- ting prices, but still aren’t able to compete on cost with Egypt, Tunisia or Turkey.
Early data show that tourists are back en masse to Turkey and the two North African destinations.
After they stayed away from Turkey following the mi- grant crisis and the failed coup attempt of summer 2016, tourists were back in the first seven months of 2018, with arrival numbers up 25% y/y to 21.64mn, according to data from the Culture and Tourism Ministry quoted by local media. Ankara is targeting 40mn tourists and revenues of $32bn for the whole of this year. This would bring numbers back above the 36mn mark passed in 2014 and 2015 before they plummeted to 25.3 million in 2016. The weak lira is also helping matters by lowering prices in what is already a prime shopping destination.
It’s a similar situation in Egypt, where tourism