Dubrovnik Airport plans to complete its 2018 business year with a total of 2,534,173 passengers, which is 9.47 percent more than in 2017. Also, the company generated revenues of HRK 415.3 million, an increase of 16.3 percent, and a profit of HRK 72 million. Speaking at a media conference traditionally held at the end of the year, said the Director General of Dubrovnik Airport, Frano Luetić, and in many ways 2018 was a record year.

“Although there is a turbulent and challenging year behind us, we have achieved new records. But we believe that 2019 will be even better and the growth in traffic and revenue will be higher. The increase in the number of passengers carried this year also has a positive impact on financial operations. The estimated operating profit of Dubrovnik Airport for 2018 is 170 million Kuna, an increase of 14 percent compared to the previous year,” commented Luetić.

Adding that “According to airline announcements, the number of operations on flights to Western and Central Europe, particularly towards the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Poland and the Czech Republic is expected to increase in 2019. The most significant announcements are carriers who are already among the top ten carriers at Dubrovnik Airport according to the number of passengers carried. These are EasyJet, Jet2.com, British Airways, Eurowings and TUI Airways and they have all announced increased capacity on all routes to Dubrovnik. Significant growth is expected in London, Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin, and a particularly significant announcement of opening Philadelphia as a new destination, said Luetić, explaining that a new line will be maintained by the world's largest air carrier, American Airlines.

Other new lines are still available for Cork Carrier Aer Lingus, Linz to Austrian Airlines and Tel Aviv by El Al airline.

However, commenting on the news that the largest low-cost airline in the world, Ryanair, will fly to Dubrovnik in 2019 he said that “we are still in negotiations.”

On Saturday, the Christmas decoration of Stradun continued. And the authors of this weekend’s decorations were pupils of the Primary School of Marina Getaldić who decorated two 'showcases', the shop windows of OTP Bank and the pastry shop Perić.

The advent decorations are part of a city program aimed at turning the Stradun into the centre of events of the Dubrovnik Winter Festival and to bring colour and joy during the holiday season. The coordinators of the project are Mrs. Lucija Perojević and Rajna Inić.

The heads of state or government of the 28 EU member countries convened in Brussels yesterday for a two-day summit which will be dominated by Britain's departure from the EU, after UK Prime Minister Theresa May managed to delay a vote on the Brexit deal in the British parliament on Monday.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković also attended the summit.

“We would like the hear Prime Minister Theresa May’s position. Obviously, she is coming to ask for additional assurances,” Plenković said in Brussels on Thursday evening.

“We think the Brexit agreement is really good, and now a lot of effort is needed to close the deal. If that doesn’t happen, the UK can ask for an extension on the deadline in order to avoid hard Brexit on March 29 next year. In any case, this needless referendum, and a campaign which was defamatory and in many ways false, has resulted in problems for the entire EU, and especially the UK,” Plenković added.

The City of Dubrovnik has a new website. The newly-designed official website of the City of Dubrovnik with a modern design adapted to the screen of all devices allows for easier navigation, better content organization and efficient search engine allowing all visitors to easily find important information.

The site is both interactive and functional and offers support for all future interactive content to receive messages from citizens. On the front page of the site in real time a visitor counter in the historical core is also displayed. And the site is adapted to web search engines like Google, so its content can easily be found. However as yet an English version of the site hasn’t been published.

The total cost of designing and making the site according to the contract was 178.125,00 Kuna including VAT.

Rating agency Fitch maintained Croatia's long-term foreign-currency issuer default rating (IDR) at 'BB+' in its latest report on Friday, with a positive outlook. They said this was a result of its strong structural features, macroeconomic indicators and high GDP per capita, but also its with weak growth potential and high public sector debt.

The positive outlook given to Croatia reflect the agency's projections that the primary budget surplus, low interest rates, and a healthy growth of GDP would continue to result in the reduction of the government debt.

Fitch expects Croatia to outperform its budget plan in 2018, for the third year running, with a budget deficit forecast of 0.2 percent of GDP, compared with the government's projection of 0.5 percent.

"Croatia's fiscal performance continues to benefit from strong revenue growth and expenditure restraint," Fitch said, and added that this was despite the contingent liabilities stemming from the troubled shipyard company Uljanik, which are expected to amount to approximately 0.6 percent of GDP this year.

They said that the general government budget will remain broadly balanced in 2019-20, against the small deficits projected by the authorities.

"Positive fiscal dynamics are underpinned by favourable nominal growth, the government's commitment to meeting its expenditure rules as well as the incentive of joining the euro zone," Fitch said.

Fitch forecast that the public debt-to-GDP ratio to fall to 74.1 percent of GDP by the end of 2018, down from 84 percent at end of 2014. They expect the ratio to continue decreasing, to 68.3 percent by 2020, and to 61.9 percent by 2023.

From the 1st of December until the 6th of January Zagreb is transformed into a winter wonderland as the Advent in Zagreb events pulls in visitors from all over the world. With stunning decorations, Christmas markets and a huge ice rink the capital pulls out all the stops to make the festive season as colourful as possible.

For three years in a row the Advent in Zagreb has been voted as the Best Christmas Market by European Best Destinations’ online poll, and for good reason.

And this new timelapse video produced and created by Pixsell really highlights the festive fun in Zagreb. 

The seasonality of Croatia’s tourism industry has caused mass closures of hotels all over the country as the winter starts to bite. Various think tanks, experts and tourism professionals have tried for years to create all-year-round tourism in Croatia but to no avail. After a record breaking tourism season hoteliers have thrown in the towels en masse and closed their establishments, meaning that from the beginning of November only one in four hotels in actually open.

According to information from the eVisitor electronic guest registration system of the 1,167 hotels in the county only 338 are still open this month, whilst the majority or 829 are closed for winter hibernation.

And the handful that are open are trying to scrape together guests from the festive period, it is expected that with the chimes of New Year still echoing only around 200 hotels will actually be open for business in the first few months of 2019. In other words Croatian hotels will be working at 20 percent of their capacity.

Quite clearly the major problem is that international airlines dominate the Croatian tourism industry, without planes landing it is difficult to fill empty hotels. And the relevant authorities don’t have the strength or commitment to put pressure on the airlines to fly out of the summer season, even though these same airlines fill their pockets during the summer months. Instead local authorities spend their time and considerable amounts of money organising winter festivals and entertainment programs rather than concentrating of actually attracting foreign guests.

According to the newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija the situation is getting worse. Twenty years ago, when Croatia had just returned to the world tourism market after the Homeland War, only twenty percent of the hotels throughout the country actually closed in the winter, and these tended to be the hotels without central heating and ones that were set up as summer retreats. The vast majority worked and were open to groups of guests from Germany, Scandinavia and the UK who enjoyed the winter sunshine as well as having the time and space to really experience the rich history and culture of Croatia.

Two decades later and the situation is almost completely reverse, instead of pushing forward with the most important industry and a huge contributor to the country’s GDP the tourism industry is going backwards. Filling a hotel along the Croatian coastline is hardly a challenge but during the winter it requires hard work, creativity and imagination. 

Although Croatia's government utilised the country's recent economic upturn to reduce debt and strengthen external buffers, important challenges still remain, such as the need to restructure public administration and make the pension and health care systems sustainable, a delegation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Monday.

An IMF mission was recently on a visit to Croatia as part of their regular advisory visits. Their report on Croatia's economy was published by the IMF and the central bank on Monday.

The IMF noted that relatively low levels of public and private investments, and the emigration of young people hamper the nation's medium-term growth prospects.

"Emigration and population aging are generating labor shortages. They also challenge the long-term sustainability of the pension and the healthcare systems. This calls for a smartly focused transformation to a more dynamic economy, and a more efficient state," the IMF said, adding that "a sizable restructuring of public administration" was essential.

Other important issues to tackle are fixing the health care and pension systems, the IMF said, noting that although some progress has been made on those fronts, the momentum needs to be sustained.