Tickets for the 69th Dubrovnik Summer Festival are now on sale. The ticket office in the Festival Palace in the heart of the Old City of Dubrovnik is now open for the purchase of tickets for the 69th Dubrovnik Summer Festival program. The office will be open from 10 am to 2 pm from Monday till Friday and from the beginning of May will start working on a full-day schedule.

The programme of the 69 Dubrovnik Summer Festival, which traditionally takes place from 10 July to 25 August in around twenty site specific venues of Dubrovnik.

Full details of this year’s program can be found at the website of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival.

An earthquake, measuring 3.4 on the Richter scale, rumbled through the north of the Dubrovnik – Neretva County yesterday.

The epicentre of the quake was in neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina and seventeen kilometres away in Metkovic the ground shook as the quake rumbled through. According to the Croatian Seismic Centre the estimated population in the so called “felt area” of the earthquake was 130,000. No injuries or severe material damage has so far been reported.

If you are travelling towards the Dubrovnik suburb of Lozica be careful as a road traffic accident has just occurred blocking the busy road in both directions.

The emergency services are on the scene and are attempting to clear the road.

One eye witness told The Dubrovnik Times that “It would appear that the car lost control on the wet road and crashed into the wall.” It is still unclear as to whether anyone was injured in the accident.

Boninovo – a place where love is treasured in Dubrovnik. With panoramic views over the Adriatic Sea the security fence stands guard over the sheer cliff drop, and apart from this more practical purpose it also holds romantic dreams.

This seemingly plain green fence has become Dubrovnik’s love lock wall. It is hard to say when it started, at least ten years ago is our best guess, but now the fence is awash with pledges of undying love from all over the world.

Padlocks with the initials, messages, hearts and poems are snapped into place on the fence and the keys are then thrown in the sea. It the modern day version of carving your names in a tree trunk, but once more environmentally friendly.

“Love U 4ever,” from a Swiss couple – “Be my Valentine” in French and “U complete me” from Juan in Mexico. The Dubrovnik love fence is as international as the guests that land every summer.

If you want to add your own enteral love message on a padlock then from the Old City head up the road from Pile Gate for around a kilometre, when you get close the clank of padlocks in the wind will led the way.

Croatia has the fourth most expensive hotel room rates in Europe, with the average price of a room a whopping 135.9 Euro. According to research by the leading agency STR Global into the price of accommodation in Europe the most expensive room rates are in Switzerland with an average price of 192.8 Euro.

The agency investigated accommodation, travel agencies, tourist attractions and prices across the whole of Europe and Croatia came out as the fourth most expensive room rates. After Switzerland, Italy came in second place at 142.8 Euro, followed by Malta at 138.3 Euro and Croatia at 135.9 Euro.

Croatian accommodation is more expensive than France (118 Euro), Spain (114 Euro) and Greece (119 Euro). Whilst some of the cheapest countries were Germany (101 Euro), Great Britain (105 Euro) and Finland (103 Euro). According to the research the cheapest room rates in Europe can be found in Austria which had an average hotel room price of only 101 Euro.

“Overcrowded destinations are successful, but there is a thin line between success and failure,” commented the Mayor of Dubrovnik, Mato Franković, at the recent ITB travel trade fair in Berlin.

Overcrowding is a huge problem is many popular tourist destinations, Venice, Barcelona, New York and London are all facing problems tackling the downside of being tourist magnets. And Mediterranean destinations have the extra pressure of thousands of cruise ship passengers arriving every day.

With cheap flights and online accommodation agencies travel has never been cheaper or easier, meaning that many tourists arrive for shorter trips, in fact the average stay in Dubrovnik last year was less than 3 days.

However, the advantages of easy travelling have led to overcrowding, in a survey by the consultants IPK around 9 percent of travellers commented that overcrowding negatively affected their vacation.

According to a recent report the City of Dubrovnik is getting creative in order to cope with the crowds. By the end of this year the city will launch a new app that will inform visitors when the historic Old City is overcrowded. It will feature a real-time people counter that will show the number of people in the city core at any given time.

And in an attempt to disperse tourists to other regions around the historic walls the city plans to launch a car-sharing scheme.

And the last, and quite possibly most important measure, will come from the Port of Dubrovnik, who will work on rearranging the arrivals of cruise ships to the city in an attempt to ease the infrastructure problems in peak times. This scheme will come into force this year but the full effects are expected to be seen from next year. The city is also looking at overcrowding solutions in New York and Venice.

The runway and aprons of Dubrovnik Airport are currently undergoing a major overhaul with the works on schedule to be completed by the middle of March.

The current works are the second phase of the development project aimed at increasing the capacity of the airport to almost 4 million passengers a year.

The runway and taxiway works that are in progress will expand the western apron, include the construction of two new rapid exit taxiways, a new east apron and the construction of a new commercial aviation apron on the western side.

For the eighth time the state owned hotel chain, Hotel Maestral, has been put up for sale. The Centre for Reconstruction and Sales (CERP) have announced the public sale of 355.520 shares in the Hotel Maestral company for a total nominal price of 71 million Kuna. This amount of shares makes up 68.9 percent of the shares in the Dubrovnik hotel chain.

CERP are calling for interested parties to send a letter of intent for the purchase of the shares by the 9th of March 2018.

Hotel Maestral consists of five hotels in the Lapad Bay area of Dubrovnik. This last remaining state owned hotel chain in Dubrovnik has been up sale for the past few years but so far every deal has fallen through. The current management of the company are even considering putting together a management buy-out package for this latest sale.