The bounce back from the two lost years of the global pandemic has been steady, not just in the far south of Croatia, but it almost every tourist destination in the world. And recently released figures from the gateway to Dubrovnik confirm the slow growth.

The first contact, for the vast majority of tourists in Dubrovnik, is the recently renamed Dubrovnik Airport, renamed to Ruđer Bošković Airport. And figure and statistics from the airport give a good indication on how many tourists there are in the region.

Now traditionally the airport, and indeed the city, has struggled to attract airlines outside of the warmer months. Whereas over 60 airplanes land daily in the summer months, in the winter this is down below the number of fingers on your hand. And if you take away the flights from Croatia Airlines to Zagreb then there isn’t really much reason for the airport to even open.

However, in spite of the winter hibernation the number of passengers passing through the airport in January has increased slightly, nothing to get too excited about, but a steady growth since the end of the pandemic. In January, 2024 exactly 15,095 passengers used Dubrovnik Airport. This is just over 800 more passengers than in January from 2023, when 14,269 used the southernmost airport in Croatia. On the other hand, it is still some way behind the figures of pre-pandemic levels, in 2018 22,280 passengers and in 2019 just over 26,000 passengers used the airport.

The seasonality of Dubrovnik Airport is obvious when you compare passenger figures in the winter and summer months. Last year in August over 444,000 passengers landed and departed from the airport, and the three months of June, July and August saw over 1.9 million passengers, yet in January, February and March the number was only just north of 82,000.