In December 2021, Croatia experienced an increase in tourist arrivals of 247% and an increase in tourist nights of 113%.

With 2021 officially over, it is worthwhile to look at the latest report of the Croatian National Tourist Board for December 2021. Here we can see that Croatia had an increase of 247% in arrivals and an increase of 113% in tourist nights.

More specifically, Croatia noted 240.2k arrivals in December 2021, compared to 69.3k in December 2020. Of the total number of arrivals in December, foreign tourists accounted for 121.6k or 50.6%. This represents a slight increase MoM of 1.6% when compared to November 2021. This can be attributed to the relaxed pandemic measures in Croatia, as well as increased arrivals due to the holiday season.

When looking at the tourist nights, in December, Croatia experienced 679.5k tourist nights compared to the 475.8k in the same period of 2020. This would indicate that the average stay per person decreased from 4.3 nights to 2.6 nights. When looking only at the foreign tourists, the average stay per person amounted to 3.2 nights, compared to 8.3 nights in December 2020. Even though this number might seem a bit low compared to the December of 2020, one has to take into account the lower numbers of tourist arrivals and overnight stays (2.7x and 7x less, respectively), as well as the lower mobility due to restrictions (and thus longer night stays). When this is taken into account, this discrepancy does not surprise. Of total tourist nights realized, foreign tourists accounted for 388.3k or 61%. Of that, tourists from Slovenia lead the list, accounting for 9% of total nights.

If we were to observe the figures since the beginning of the year, 13.8m arrivals were recorded, representing a 77% increase YoY. At the same time, tourist nights reached 84.1m by the end of December, representing a 54.6% increase YoY.

Looking over to the arrivals realized in December by counties, Zagreb leads the list with 74.1k arrivals (31% of total) and 160k tourist nights (25% of total). When analyzing the data by the type of accommodation, it can be observed that hotels experienced a 321% increase in arrivals to 158.7k (from 37.7k in December 2020), while nights realized stood at 316.2k, representing an increase of 324% (from 74.5k in December 2020).