Tuesday, 18 February 2025
Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas - The editor and big chief of The Dubrovnik Times. Born in the UK he has been living and working in Dubrovnik since 1998, yes he is one of the rare “old hands.” A unique insight into both British and Croatian life and culture, Mark is often known as just “Englez” or Englishman. He is a traveller, a current affairs freak and a huge AFC Wimbledon fan.

Email: mark.thomas@dubrovnik-times.com

The Croatian festival Fresh Island has been nominated for the prestigious European award ‘’Europe Festival Awards’’ and for the ‘’UK Festival Awards’’.

In the category ‘’Best Small Festival’’, Fresh Island was nominated along with some of the most popular European festivals such as Snowbombing, Exodus, Rolling Stone Weekender, EDP Jazz etc.

The Europe Festival Awards is one of the most important European awards and an indicator that Fresh Island Festival has been growing year after year thus promoting Croatia as a desirable destination on the territory of more than 40 world countries.

This significant recognition to the Croatian festival in the form of nomination is a sort of reward for the last six successful festival seasons that were visited by 75,000 tourists.

This year’s edition of the Fresh Island Festival gathered more than 25,000 people during a seven-day stay on the island of Pag, thus, their satisfaction with the festival launched Fresh Island to the popular European selection of the most successful festivals in Europe.

‘’When it comes to summer festivals, Fresh Festival has set high standards. The leading r’n’b and hip-hop music stars of today such as Chris Brown, Wiz Khalifa, Snoop Dogg, Kehlani, Sean Paul, Rae Sremmurd, French Montana and Young Thug are just some of the names that performed on the festival. We expect that the 7th edition of our festival will attract new music names that will surely position Croatia high of the list of the most desirable summer music destinations’’, commented organizers of the Fresh Island Festival.

Once again the Maestral Hotels Group is up for sale. This state owned Dubrovnik hotel company owns five hotels in the bay of Lapad, including Hotel Uvala and Hotel Splendid. The government run agency, the Centre for Reconstructing and Sales, has announced that they will be accepting offers of intent from investors up till the 13th of November. A total of 68.9 percent of the shares in Maestral Hotels are up for sale, or 355,520 shares.

This isn’t the first time that the government has tried to sell this hotel group in Dubrovnik, which is situated in a prime seafront position right on the Adriatic. In fact, the group has been on sale since 2015 and during that time many offers have been received and rejected.

The deadline for the receipt of letters of intent is by Monday, November 13, at midday and interested investors will be invited to submit written bids for the purchase of shares in writing. It is to be hoped that Hotel Maestral will finally change owners and be privatized, as the hotel chain is in desperate need of fresh investment.

Six months after the opening of the new passenger terminal, Franjo Tudjman Airport has recorded continuous increase in the number of passengers.

Since the beginning of this year, the airport has recorded a cumulative increase in the number of passengers by 12 percent, whilst only in October it recorded a growth of 17 percent.

This year has proven a record-breaking year for Zagreb Airport. In August, earlier than ever, the airport welcomed two millionth passenger, whilst it is expecting to achieve a figure of 3 million passengers in December for the first time in its history.

It is important to note that this year’s arrival of the largest international air carrier in the Middle East and one of the best in the world – Emirates has represented a special step forward in the business operations of Franjo Tudjman airport.

At the beginning of the summer season 2017 Emirates launched a year-round flight between Dubai and Zagreb and since then it has carried a large number of passengers from more than 60 world countries, mostly from Asia but also from Australia and Oceania to Zagreb. Thus, Croatia and Zagreb have become more accessible to distant markets, which will have a positive effect on Croatian tourism in the off-season period as well.

‘’Apart from Emirates, the national air carrier Croatia Airlines has also significantly contributed to this traffic increase with its four new flights to Stockholm, Oslo, Helsinki and Bucharest as well as Monarch, an air carrier specialized for leisure city breaks, thanks to which the number of British tourists increased this year. In addition to the new flights, there was also an increase in the number of flights and the size of aircraft on existing destinations, including LOT flight to Warsaw, Czech Airlines flight to Prague, Air Transat flight to Toronto and Qatar Airways regular flight to Doha’’, reported Franjo Tudjman Airport.

One of the greatest bass players of all time arrived in Dubrovnik late last night ahead of collaboration with Emir Hot on his latest album.

Dino Fiorenza has played with such names as Slash, Steve Vai and Paul Gilbert, just to name a few, over his long and successful career. In 2002 he was nominated for the prestigious award “Bass Player of the year,” and is well known for his style of play.

He will team up with Hot, who is currently in the Pavarotti Centre studios in Mostar, on a new album which will be produced by the famous British producer Tom Newman. “I am looking forward to working with Hot on what should be a great album,” commented the Italian bass player as he arrived at Dubrovnik Airport last night.

dino dubrovnik

After another tourist charter season on the Mediterranean, the largest online platform for renting boats Zizoo reveals this year’s the most sought after summer destinations and the latest trends in the nautical world.

The company Zizoo, named after the nickname of the famous explorer and oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, is the leading boat holiday platform, offering 8,000 boats across 200 destinations worldwide. Zizoo provide its services both to licensed sailors, and to those with no sailing experience, interested in renting a boat together with a captain and optional crew as an alternative or complement to hotel accommodation.

According to Zizoo data, the most sought after destination this summer was Croatia. Considering the fast-growing popularity of Croatia as a tourist destination and almost the ideal sailing conditions the country offers, it is no surprise that more than 64 percent out of the total number of requests and just over half the Zizoo reservations in 2017 were for Croatia.

The most sought after destinations in Croatia this summer were Split, Pula and Trogir.

The second most sought after summer destination this year was Greece, which accounted for 20 percent of the total number of charter companies.

Furthermore, Zizoo data show that 71 percent of German and more than 80 percent of Austrian clients chose the Croatian coast this year. Almost 40 percent of American clients opted for Croatia, whilst slightly more than half of them requested a boat in Greece.

When it comes to the UK market, the majority of British clients opted for Croatia instead of Greece this year, thus Croatia placed better than the former leading country of Greece.

The newly opened Sunset Beach in the Bay of Lapad quite clearly still has a lot of work to do through the winter months to bring it up to standard. These photos were sent to us by readers of The Dubrovnik Times and show just how dangerous the children’s playground is.

The concrete mountings of the children’s slide and bouncy toys are clearly visible through the gravel and are potentially extremely dangerous. “We are very concerned about the new Sunset Beach playground, it was just built and is quite unsafe for children,” commented the readers. We are inclined to agree with them.

sunset beach lapad dangerous playground

Design problems with children's playground 

With more airlines and more passengers than ever before 2017 has certainly been a year to remember for Dubrovnik Airport. For the first time in its history the airport handled 2 million passengers and by the end of the year this could reach 2.3 million.

Every month, apart from March, saw an increase in the number of passengers through the airport with April seeing a massive 52 percent increase in passenger numbers. In 2016 Dubrovnik Airport handled 1.9 million passengers but the figures from this year are already 16 percent up on last year.

The fact that Dubrovnik attracted a major car conference in the early months of the year certainly helped to improve the otherwise weaker winter months. However, the passenger figures for the first ten months of 2017 indicate the seasonal operations of the airport. In January this year just over 19,000 passengers passed through the airport, whilst in July this number had grown generously to 442,000.

passenger numbers through dubrovnik airport 2017

Within the next few days, the Croatian Tourist Board will be participating at the leading global event for the travel industry in London.

The World Travel Market (WTM) is taking place in the British capital from the 6th to the 8th of November 2017 for the 38th time in a row. The fair is held every year in London and represents the largest business travel fair in the world.

Every year this large travel fair gathers around 5,500 exhibitors from 180 world countries and is visited by more than 50,000 tourist professionals, ministers of tourism and other closely related departments as well as by representatives of the media.

On this occasion, the Ministry of Tourism and the Croatian Tourist Board (HTZ) will present the latest promotional tourist video of Croatia. The presentation will take place at the HTZ stand during Wine & Cheese gathering on the 7th of November.

Apart from the premiere of the new video, Croatia will present itself with new promotional exhibition stands i.e. with the concept and creative solution of presentation at travel fairs.

The Voice of Dubrovnik

THE VOICE OF DUBROVNIK


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