There could well be an invasion of Russian tourists into Croatia this summer season. According to reports on the Russian news website balkanpro.ru the number of Russian travel operators who are organising deals to Croatia has increased by nearly 300 percent on 2015!

Several major Russian tour operators have shown an interest in dealing with Croatia, including Coral Travel, Natali Tours, Spektrum and the PAC Group. There will be regular flight operations between many Croatian cities, including Dubrovnik, this year. The Russian national airline Aeroflot and S7 airlines will fly directly from Moscow to Dubrovnik for most of the summer. There are even negotiations from another Russian airline, Red Wings, to fly every day to Dubrovnik from the Russian capital.

Last year, Croatia was visited by 113,000 Russians and if the news that the number of Russian travel operators have increased drastically is any guide that number could be much more for 2016.

In the opinion of Mr. Ruzicka, tourists could be and more. In this season, says Rajko Ruzicka, due to the redistribution of tourist flows in Europe, in Croatia has increased the number of reservations from Germany, Great Britain, Austria, Italy and others.

With just a under a week left until the filming of Star Wars VIII in Dubrovnik the final touches are being made to the set. The historic old city of Dubrovnik has been transformed into scenes from a galaxy far away, the latest facade to get the Star Wars make-over is the Great Onofrio Fountain. The fountain, which has only recently been renovated, now has a rather futuristic look to it.

Many of the buildings on the Stradun, the main street that runs through the centre of Dubrovnik, have new facades and even now have new window decorations. Again today the Stradun will be closed from 8pm until midnight whilst the final technical rehearsals are carried out.

The only thing missing is the actors that will appear in Dubrovnik. It had been previously rumoured that Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker and Daisy Ridley, who stars as Rey, will appear in Dubrovnik, although Ridley has said in an interview for the BBC that she will not be filming in Dubrovnik. A landspeeder on rails has been spotted on the Stradun by a local media outlet giving more weight to the rumour that Skywalker will arrive.

Many other public spaces around Dubrovnik have now been prepared for filming, including the Dominican Monastery and the interior of the Rectors Palace. The terrible weather in Dubrovnik at the moment is proving a challenge for the production crew, heavy rains and gale force southerly winds have been battering the region for the past week.

Photos - Star Wars Dubrovnik

One of the most important tourism exhibitions in France open in Lyon. The Mahana tourism trade fair in the French city of Lyon today and will last until the 6th of March. The tourist board of the Dubrovnik-Neretva County is present at the fair and have jointly taken a stand with the tourist boards of Split, Zadar and Sibenik.

This is the seventh year in a row that the Dubrovnik-Neretva County has been present at this travel fair at which an estimated 300 exhibitors will be present and 35,000 people will visit.

French tourists have, for many years, been among the top three most numerous tourists in the county, and as the city is well connected with flights from French cities for this season that number could well grow.

In 2015 the Dubrovnik-Neretva County was visited by almost 110,000 tourists from France, who generated 440,000 overnight stays.

The Sheraton Dubrovnik Riviera is playing host this weekend to the third regional summit of the “300 Best” entrepreneurs in South East Europe. The congress of the “best of the best” starts today, the 4th of March, and continues until the 6th of March and will see business people from 13 European countries.

For this festival of entrepreneurship there will be various meetings, workshops, and networking opportunities at which leading businessmen and women will be able to exchange ideas and professional experiences. The overall goal is to promote the importance of entrepreneurship.

Various leading lights from the world of business in South East Europe will attend the three-day meeting including Branko Roglić, the owner of “ORBICO" group from Zagreb which has a annual turnover of one billion Euros, Dragoljub Vukadinovic, the president and creator of the Serbian company " METALAC" Gornji Milanovac, and Tanja Skaza, the owner and CEO of a very successful company from Slovenia " PLASTIKA SKAZA." The “300 Best” event will also be attended by Prof. dr. Reinhard Priebe from Germany, a former high ranking official of the European Commission.

The largest Dalmatian shopping centre, the Mall of Split, officially opened its doors today to the public. The official opening program at 11 am and thousands of people rushed through the doors to see the new shopping centre which is full of new brand name stores.

The Mall of Split is an investment worth 1.3 billion Kuna and will employ around 1,500 people. The mega shopping centre has over 200 stores, restaurants, nine cinemas, and casino and much more, it also has garaged parking for over 2,300 vehicles. Many of the stores today has special opening offers and discounts and this only helped to attract even more customers.

The Austrian capital of Vienna again won the title as the highest ranked city in the Quality of Living Survey conducted by Mercer, the New York-headquartered human resources consulting firm, while the Croatian capital of Zagreb ranks 98th on a list of 230 cities.

“The survey of 230 cities helps companies and organisations determine compensation and hardship allowances for international staff. It uses dozens of criteria such as political stability, health care, education, crime, recreation and transport. Global centres London, Paris, Tokyo and New York City did not even make the top 30, lagging behind most big German, Scandinavian and Australian cities,” Reuters said.
Vienna has been at the top of the ranking for seven consecutive years.

“Vienna’s 1.7 million inhabitants benefit from the city’s cafe culture and museums, theatres and operas. Rents and public transport costs in the city whose architecture is marked by its past as the centre of the Habsburg empire are cheap compared with other western capitals,” according to Reuters.

Zurich in Switzerland, Auckland in New Zealand, Munich in Germany and Vancouver in Canada followed Vienna in the top five most pleasant cities to live in.

Zagreb fares better than, for example, Tel Aviv, Wroclaw or Shanghai.

Some of the cities in Croatia’s neighbourhood score better than Croatia’s capital – Ljubljana ranking 76th and Budapest 77th.
On the other hand, Belgrade is behind Zagreb, ranking 141st, and Sarajevo 158th.

Baghdad was again ranked lowest in the world. Damascus, five year’s into Syria’s bloody war, ranked six places above Baghdad, with Bangui in the Central African Republic, war-torn Yemen’s capital Sanaa, Haiti’s Port-au-Prince, Sudan’s Khartoum and Chad’s N’Djamena in between.

Source - Hina

Dubrovnik has been blessed with a very mild winter this year, but March looks like being a completely different story. Gale force southerly winds have brought with them torrential rain, heavy seas and grey skies. The long-range forecast for the rest of the month is for rain, rain and yet more rain, not good news for the cast and crew of Star Wars unless they are filming underwater scenes.

Today the south winds blew again and brought with them “dirty rain.” Sands picked up in the Sahara desert by the strong winds have been dumped with rain in Dubrovnik meaning that everything, from cars to windows, has a brown filter of sand. Perhaps the best business to open is a Dubrovnik car wash one.

Check out our video of the rolling seas around the Old City of Dubrovnik.

As one of the most beautiful cities in the world becomes a stage for the recording of the mega popular Star Wars, another international event with some “force” will be coming to Dubrovnik in early April.

From the 2nd to the 3rd of April Dubrovnik will play host to European Judo in the European Judo Cup. After the European Cup arrived in Dubrovnik in October 2015, this year's dates much more favourable to the European Judo community. The beauty of Dubrovnik, mild climate and good organization are the trumps which could attract some of the biggest names in European judo to the city this spring. Last year’s Cup attracted more than 200 judo athletes from 18 countries, and the hosts of the event in March, the Dubrovnik Judo Club 1966, believe that this year will be even more attractive.

The European Judo Cup will be held in the Dubrovnik Sports Centre from the 2nd to the 3rd of April and according to information from the organiser’s entry will be free of charge. And with Dubrovnik currently all over the international media, thanks to the filming of the Star Wars VIII and the Game of Thrones serial, the organisers believe that the chance to visit Dubrovnik will bring more athletes and teams this year.