''For Croatian tourism the British market is strategically important, this year it placed as the 7th among the top ten world markets with which Croatia recorded the highest tourist traffic and there is great potential for further growth'', said Ratomir Ivcic, the director of the Croatian Tourist Board (HTZ) at the World Travel Market (WTM) in London.
The World Travel Market (WTM), one of the world's largest tourist exchange markets began on the 7th of November in London and will last until the 9th of November. It gathered more than 5,000 exhibitors from around 200 world countries, whilst Croatia is led by the HTZ and more than 50 individual exhibitors, companies and tourist boards.
On the first day of the event the Croatia's exhibition place was visited by numerous business partners from the UK as well as from other world markets, who discussed cooperation and operations with Croatian hoteliers, transporters and others. They were all optimistic because great results were recorded this year from the British market.
''The UK market is very important to us because its guests are at the top of the average daily consumption of over 120 Euros, whilst over the last five years the arrival of British tourists has been increasing constantly. In addition, they are among those who accepted and understood the best new brand messages and promotional activities from the Croatian Tourist Board'', explained Ivcic.
In the first ten months of 2016 more than 624,000 British tourists visited Croatia and achieved almost 3.3 million overnight stays or 25 percent more in comparison to 2015. The similar trend of growth is expected in 2017.
Ivcic also emphasized that the British mostly opted for Dubrovnik, but also for the Split region and Istria. As these are mostly air guests, ten more new flights are planned for next year. Thus the tour operator Thomson as part of the TUI Group will introduce two new flights in 2017 from Great Britain to Pula and Dubrovnik, Jet2com announces four new flights to Dubrovnik, Pula and Split, Thomas Cook will operate a new flight to Split, whilst Ryanair and Easyjet also announced new flights for Croatia in 2017. They all expect an increase in tourist arrivals of up to 100 percent in comparison to this year.