Just to keep your warm through the winter days the Dubrovnik Summer Festival have released a rather fab roundup video of last year’s festivities.

From the 10th of July until the 25th of August the Dubrovnik Summer Festival entertained thousands of guests with 80 performances with over 2,000 artists on 20 special stages located throughout the city. With the comment “The cure for post-holiday blues? Summer reminiscences!” the organisers posted this recap on their social media sites.
And once again Dubrovnik will play host to a thousand stars as the 69th Dubrovnik Summer Festival this year.

Check out the stunning video.

Dubrovnik museums participate in a large international project that resulted in an exhibition "In the sea of intimacy. Underwater archeology witnesses the story of the Adriatic ", set up in the former fish market in Trieste - Salon of Miracles (Salone degli Incanti) thanks to the joint contribution of over 60 Italian, Croatian, Slovenian and Montenegrin institutions.

The exhibition presents relics, artworks, everyday useful items, goods for sale and security equipment found on ships sunk in the Adriatic for the first time and at over 2 thousand square meters of exhibition space. Among the almost thousand findings from underwater locations presented at the exhibition, 304 were borrowed from Croatian institutions - 59 items of them are from the collection of underwater findings of the Dubrovnik Maritime Museum.

With rich accompanying programs, such as lectures and educational workshops for different school ages, the exhibition will stay opened until May 1st this year.

Slowly but surely Croatia is becoming an all-year-round destination for tourism and this is highlighted by official figures just in for November 2017.

According to the Croatian Statistical Office there were an impressive 304,000 passengers travelling through Croatia’s airports in November last year, which is an increase of 15.6 percent when compared to the same month form 2016.

The capital led the way with 222,000 passengers in November passing through Zagreb Airport. But the coastal airports also recorded encouraging results, Split saw 37,000 passengers, an increase of 22 percent, and Dubrovnik Airport had the highest percentage increase with 34,000 passengers a massive 40 percent jump.

The most significant international traffic was realised with German airports, 79 thousand passengers, which was an increase of 24.8% compared to the same period from the previous year.

In the latest Global Economic Prospects for 2018, the World Bank expects growth of the Croatian economy by 2,6 percent.

Confirming its updated estimates from October last year, the World Bank estimates that Croatia will achieve economic growth by 2,6 percent. However, it will be a slowdown in comparison to 2017, but in 2019, the World Bank expects a slight re-acceleration of the Croatian economic growth to 2,8 percent.

The World Bank’s latest estimate for Croatia is slightly lower than the prognosis of other institutions. In its recent prognosis, the European Commission announced that in 2018 it expects the Croatian economy to rise by 2,8 percent, whilst the International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects it to rise by 2,7 percent.

The Croatian National Bank (HNB) is somewhat more optimistic and expects growth of the country’s economy by 2,9 percent. The Croatian Government based its budget for 2018 on this estimate.

Throughout 2017 there were 863 road traffic accidents in the Dubrovnik – Neretva County, which when compared with 2016, is a reduction of 5 percent, announced the Dubrovnik Police Administration.

However, the number of fatalities rose in Dubrovnik last year, there were 11 accidents that resulted in fatalities, which is an increase of 57 percent on 2016. The number of road traffic accidents which involved injuries was 396, which was a decrease of 3 percent, whilst accidents with material damage fell by 7 percent.

During the month of January, the Dubrovnik police will carry out a number of measures to control drivers, such as speed checks and alcohol tests. The Dubrovnik Police have also announced that on the 11th of January an action will be carried out on drivers not wearing seat belts or improper use of mobile phones whilst driving.

The world’s largest tourist portal for travel planning and accommodation booking has released the list of top destinations on the rise and it features a Croatian hotspot.

Taking into consideration numerous travellers’ ratings and comments, TripAdvisor listed the Top 10 Destinations on the Rise including Rovinj in Istria in the 8th place. The Japanese island of Ishigaki topped the list, followed by Kapaa (Hawaii), Nairobi (Kenya), Halifax (Nova Scotia), Gdansk (Poland), San Jose (Costa Rica), Riga (Latvia), Rovinj (Croatia), Nerja (Spain) and Casablanca in Morocco.

The popular tourist portal also recommended ‘’don’t miss’’ sights in listed destinations. Thus, when it comes to Rovinj, they recommend visiting Old Town, Punta Corrente and the Church of St. Euphemia, among many other interesting things.

In addition, Rovinj broke its own record in the number of realized overnight stays in 2017. The figures show an increase in arrivals and overnights stays by 11 percent last year, i.e. Rovinj recorded 637,976 arrivals and 3,850,112 overnight stays and was the second destination in Croatia by the number of realized overnight stays.

The most numerous tourists by realized overnight stays in Rovinj in 2017 were Germans (32%), Austrians (15%), Italians (10%), the Dutch (7%) and Slovenians (5%).

The highest turnover was achieved in camps (47%), followed by hotels (27%), household objects (20%), non-commercial accommodation (3%) and other accommodation facilities (3%).

The iconic ferry that has transported millions of people to the Elpahite Islands near Dubrovnik will soon be replaced. Jadrolinija, the state owned ferry company, has decided to upgrade and modernise their aging fleet and the Dubrovnik ferry Postira will be replaced.

"The fleet modernization task is number one, so we are intensively resuming its reconstruction. A project documentation is currently underway for a passenger ship that would replace the legendary "Postira” "built in 1963. We are certainly heading in the direction of the basic idea that Jadrolinija should have the fastest, most modern and largest fleet on the most important routes today. We also want to ensure our passengers accessibility to every island in the most enjoyable and efficient way," commented Jadronlinija.

A Croatian hotel on the Dalmatian coast has been awarded the prestigious Holiday Check Gold Award 2018.

The online portal HolidayCheck, one of the world’s leading portals for bookings and reviews when it comes to travel and accommodation, visit 20 to 30 million users a month who write around 10 million comments and reviews about destinations and accommodation.

According to numerous reviews and ratings of these guests, which are the best and most valuable indicator of quality, the Holiday Check Gold Award 2018 was awarded to this year’s winners.

Among many awarded hotels, the Hotel Falkensteiner Club Funimation Borik from the city of Zadar is the first and only Croatian hotel to be awarded with a ‘’gold medal’’.

This recognition is very important because to win this title it takes at least five consecutive years of winning the Holiday Check Award, which the hotel from Zadar successfully achieved in the period from 2013 to 2018.

Apart from the Hotel Falkensteiner Club Funimation Borik, the award for excellence went to Hotel Miramar (Opatija), Aminess Maestral Hotel (Novigrad), Falkensteiner Hotel & Spa Iadera (Zadar), Bretanide Sport & Wellness Resort (Bol) and Sentido Kaktus Hotel (Supetar).

For this year’s awards, HolidayCheck took into consideration reviews and comments of more than 980,000 hotel guests.