Zadar Tourist Board reveals its visitor numbers for 2010

Yesterday’s edition of the Dalmatian newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija reported on statistics provided by the Zadar Tourist Board on the number of tourists in Zadar so far this year – and it’s a little bit of a mixed bag in comparison to 2009.

The tourist board has said it predicts that there will be over one million overnight stays in the town by the end of the year – and seeing as January to August this year already saw 918,343 stays, that’s not a bad prediction. This figure is a rather considerable rise of 13% over the same period last year. However, the number of overnight stays is split into 134,583 stays by Croatian guests (a fall of 3% from 2009) and 783,760 by foreign guests (up 16%). There were 217,030 guests in Zadar during the same period – 36,276 domestic tourists and 180,754 foreign – which is just 1% greater than in 2009.

However, there was actually a fall in the number guests for August alone. 63,182 guests came to Zadar during last month (6,141 domestic, 57,041 foreign) which is a drop of 4% from August last year. Despite the fall in the number of tourists visiting, there was still a rise in the number of overnight stays by 12% to 330,069.

Overall, therefore, the number of guests visiting Zadar is just above last year’s level, though the town’s guests are staying for quite a bit longer.

Top nationalities visiting Zadar were Italians and Germans – despite recording an overall fall in their numbers by 33% and 4% respectively. In the ranking of visitor numbers after these two were guests from Spain, France, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, and the UK, with a healthy increase in numbers from the first two and last country reported. An increase in guests from Russia, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Australia and the US has also been noted.