Willis Towers Watson as one of the leading global groups for risk management, insurance brokerage, reinsurance and business consulting has started its operations in Croatia this November through the company Willis Towers Watson JSC, reported the company on the 21st of November.

The direct entry of the Willis Towers Watson company in Croatia is a result of the $18 billion merger of the Towers Watson company and Willis Group Holdings at the global level earlier this year. The latter has already developed operations in Croatia through its network of branches.

Willis Towers Watson emphasizes that they have ''big plans for Croatia'', even though they are currently most focused on insurance and reinsurance brokerage. In the near future they plan to develop other segments of their offer.

Marko Stajduhar, the CEO of the Gras Savoye Croatia JSC (the Willis Towers Watson Group member company) says that the Willis Towers Watson Group generates added value in the development of the domestic market intermediation insurance services as well as in the entire insurance industry.

‘’Our goal is to reduce business risk for our clients and to make them more competitive. On the other side, through access to our global network we create new possibilities for our domestic insurance companies for development of new creative products and offer them the possibility of reinsurance’’, said Stajduhar. He also added that the Croatian market would be directly provided with solutions by the Willis Towers Watson Group to all segments of the business consulting related to risk management including consultancy in human resources management.

Willis Towers Watson is a leading global advisory, broking and solutions company that helps clients around the world turn risk into a path for growth. It employs more than 39,000 people in more than 120 world countries, whilst its annual turnover is more than $8,2 billion. The company states that they work with almost 90 percent of the world’s most successful companies from the Fortune 500 list.

Children Winter Festival Orlandino opens on Friday, November 25, at 6 pm in the Gruz park. The children programme of the Dubrovnik Winter Festival will be opened by Mayor of Dubrovnik Andro Vlahusic, accompanied by the performance of primary school students. On the same day the amusement park and ice-skating rink will be opened in the Port of Gruz. This year’s novelty is the home of Hansel and Gretel!

Good news are that on the opening day, from 6 pm to 9 pm the ice skating rink will be free and in the amusement park every child will get one token for free with the purchased one.

This year ‘Orlandino’ brings workshops, special holiday film screenings, cake party, Christmas tale with fifteen hundred gifts and much more. The ice skating rink and amusement park will be opened until January 8.

Dubrovnik has been highlighted in the November edition of the Turkish Airlines in-flight magazine “Skylife.” The article entitled “Time stands still in Dubrovnik,” over eight pages in the magazine, and in both Turkish and English, will be placed on 330 aircraft serving 296 destinations in 116 countries around the world.

Turkish Airlines is one of the few international airlines that have continued flying to Dubrovnik through the winter period, along with British Airways from London. The Turkish national carrier connects Dubrovnik with Istanbul. The article describes the delights of Dubrovnik throughout the winter period, including the Dubrovnik Winter Festival.

300,000 copies of the magazine have been printed and with over six million passengers a month travelling on Turkish Airlines it will be great publicity for Dubrovnik. The airline has even offered a special return price of 109 Euros, from the 28th of November to the 19th of December.

“Whole-year flight Istanbul-Dubrovnik is Dubrovnik tourism is important not only for Turkish tourists who come to Dubrovnik, but mostly because tourists from the Middle and Far East which is Istanbul transfer through airport coming from Japan, South Korea, China, India, and the United States and Canada,” announced the Dubrovnik Tourist Board.

Russian edition of the magazine National Geographic Traveler has included Croatia in the top 3 best tourist destinations for family vacations! It is a traditional annual award "Top travel destinations" by National Geographic magazine organizes for six years, and this year's award giving ceremony was held in Moscow. It is important to note that the prizes are given based on the online votes of Russian tourists, and this is the second year in a row that Croatia is entering the top three destinations in this category ( "Best Family Destination"). On behalf of Croatian Tourist Board Rajko Ruzcika, director of the branch office in Moscow, received an award. The importance of this award and the Russian market in general is emphasized by the director of the General office of the Croatian Tourist Board Ratomir Ivicic.

- Russia is the market that is in very specific circumstances in recent years, that are significantly hampered our business in this market. However, the Croatian National Tourist Board has not given up on Russian tourists, and in accordance with our announcements and expectations in this year we stopped the downward trend of Russian tourists in the Croatian tourist destinations. This award confirms that we can count on Russian tourists, especially those who want to have a family vacation - said Director Ivicic.

Yes, you read the headline correctly, Croatian has a Sahara and yes camels are wandering around. Last week in the town of Djurdjevac in the Koprivnica-Krizevci County camels arrived! This has got to be one of the weirdest stories of the week in Croatia.

The Croatian town in cooperation with the local tourist board bought three desert animals and brought them to Croatia. Two of them are two-hump females and one is a one-hump male.

Zeljko Lackovic, the mayor of Djurdjevac, said they wanted to turn the remains of a local desert ''Djurdjevacki Peski'' or the ''Croatian Sahara'' into a desirable tourist attraction.
''We were recently visited by a TV crew in our desert, which is one of only two such in Europe, and someone from the crew asked where the camels were. And that's how we came up with this idea'', explained Lackovic.

The first three camels are currently at a temporary location in quarantine adapting to the new environment. They are very friendly, mostly eating grass and resting. Visitors of the Croatian Sahara will be able to ride them as well. Their price hasn’t been confirmed yet, but unofficially the entire cost was around 90,000 Kunas.

‘’Lots of people wonder how camels came to this area, but archaeological findings showed bones of camels which were used by Turks to transport their cargo’’, explained Mario Fucek, the director of the Djurdjevac tourist board.

The interest in the Croatian Sahara and its new dwellers is quite big. Many production companies for filming commercials and music videos have already expressed their interest in this unique site.

Djurdjevacki Peski (Djurdjevac Sands) spread over 20 hectares and as a special geographical and botanic reserve it has been protected since 1963. The Croatian Sahara was created by drifting sediments of former glaciers in the Pleistocene, therefore within the last one million years.

Dubrovnik could soon get a “Culture Factory.” The Mayor of Dubrovnik, Andro Vlahušić, the director of the Dubrovnik Development Agency DURA, Andrea Novakovic, the head of the Department for Culture and Heritage, Ana Hilje and the director of the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, Ivana Medo Bogdanović, visited the proposed site for the “Culture Factory” in Komolac yesterday.

The space, an old factory from the TUP company, has been taken on a ten-year lease by the City of Dubrovnik for the purpose of establishing a culture centre away from the centre of the city.

The space is a former industrial plant stretching over 900 m2 and with grounds of 1,500 m2. The goal is to renovate the space using funds from the European Union and to create an incubator for cultural and creative industries under the theme of “Made in Dubrovnik.” The project design of the complex will also include a club room for the social needs of the village of Komolac.

Croatia is beautiful, no doubt about it, and every now and then one of the foreign sites re-discovers its stunning beauty and reminds us that we live in a unique part of the world! Recently the website The Culture Trip published a list of 10 most beautiful towns in Croatia. 

- No line-up of the most beautiful towns in Croatia could possibly be complete without a mention of Dubrovnik – is written in the article and we couldn't agree more!

- Cut through by the bustling thoroughfare of Stradun, this is a place where vaulted Baroque ceilings can be seen mixing with touches of the Ottoman influence; the soaring keeps of the old Ragusa Republic still crown the hilltops, and the legends of Balkan knights persist between the aged city gates, palaces and bell towers – continues the author and then mentions that Dubrovnik was King's Landing in the Game of Thrones, adding the great sentence 'a regal role for a truly regal town'.

Korcula has made it to the top 10 beautiful towns too.

- Set in the shadow of the rising limestone and dolomite ridges of the Dinaric Alps, Korcula is a true gem of Dalmatia. It can be found clinging elegantly to a curved spit of land on the northern cusp of Korcula Island, encompassed by the lapping waves of the Adriatic Sea on three sides and verdant groves of swaying palm trunks and evergreen pines on the other. Within its streets, marble-clad homes glow with gradients of faded beige and alabaster white, red-tiled roofs conceal earthy eateries touting fish stews and super-dry Croatian wines, and boats bob melancholically between the stone walls of the age-old port – this is how Korcula is described in the article.

Other towns that made it to the list are Motovun, Zadar, Trogir, Pula, Hvar, Rovinj, Split and Zagreb.

For the past few years the number of British tourists holidaying in Dubrovnik has been on the increase and next year could well see another jump as British airlines put on more flights. According to a report on the specialised website EX-YU Aviation airlines have seen a “strong demand from the Croatian market for 2017,” and have responded by introducing new flights.

British tourists have been the most numerous in Dubrovnik for a number of years and this year was no exception with Brits outnumbering other nationalities. The director of the Croatian National Tourist Board, Ratomir Ivčić, commented that, "Up until now we were the ones pursuing airlines, now it's the other way around. We have held talks with British Airways, Norwegian Air Shuttle and several other UK carriers that want to double their number of flights to Croatia, particularly Istria and southern Dalmatia".

In 2016 there was a massive increase of 26 percent in the number of Brits holidaying in Croatia and in total three million overnight stays were achieved. Jet2.com has introduced new flights to Dubrovnik and will start in April. Whilst Dubrovnik will also have UK flight connections with British Airways, Monarch Airlines, EasyJet, Norwegian Airlines, Croatia Airlines, Thompson and Thomas Cook Airlines amongst others.

And with the opening of the third terminal of Dubrovnik Airport, terminal C, expected in May 2017 this will offer even more options for additional airlines.