May the 18th, 2025 – Just how much are foreign tourists expected to spend in Croatia this summer season? It appears there will be considerable increases.
As Sinisa Malus/Poslovni Dnevnik writes, according to new research from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), Croatia’s travel and tourism sector is set to experience strong growth this year. The upcoming season is expected to contribute a massive 21.3 billion euros to the national economy this year, surpassing pre-pandemic levels. The sector has always been and continues to be one of the country’s most powerful economic engines.
tourists are set to spend a fortune in croatia this season
Foreign tourists are expected to spend 16.1 billion euros in Croatia this season, an increase of 1 billion euros or 6.9 percent compared to last year. In 2035, foreign tourist spending is estimated to reach a staggering 19.6 billion euros in total.
Domestic tourists from elsewhere across Croatia are expected to spend around 2.7 billion euros in various locations across the country, up 6.4 percent from last year. With international visitors accounting for 85 percent of spending and almost 95 percent of all leisure travel, Croatia continues to solidify its place as a top tourism favourite in Europe.
tourism – still croatia’s economic heavyweight
According to WTTC research, the sector is expected to support 488,000 jobs throughout 2025, and will grow to more than 564,000 by 2035. These figures support the moderate optimism expressed by Tourism Minister Tonči Glavina, who recently spoke about a great pre-season and the current expectations for the rest of the year.
“By May the 1st, Croatia had recorded 2.4 million arrivals and 6.7 million overnight stays, which is representative of three percent more arrivals and four percent more overnight stays than last year during the same period. All these indicators are in line with the latest research by the European Tourism Commission, where Croatia is still firmly positioned in the Top 10 most desirable destinations. For the Poles and Austrians, Croatia is in the Top 5 destinations to travel to this spring and summer. All this encourages us further as we head towards the most intense part of the year. With that being said, we still need to pay plenty of attention to price competitiveness,” warned Glavina.
In addition, the WTTC is more optimistic than, for example, the Croatian Tourism Association, which recently published more conservative research results. They showed that while another good tourist season is ahead of the country, the existing tourism development model is exhausted. They added that without encouraging investment in hotel accommodation, Croatian tourism is losing competitiveness in the face of increasingly strong Mediterranean competition.
optimism on the ground
Croatian tourism companies are very optimistic about the rapidly approaching main tourist season. 81 percent of them have been recording increases in reservations of more than six percent compared to the same period last year. They’re also expecting a slight increase in revenue in line with this; 38 percent expect an increase in revenue of three to six percent, and 57 percent expect revenue growth of more than six percent. However, this year too, the growth in costs is expected to exceed revenue growth. This issue has been reducing the profitability of the sector and its investment potential for years now.
a good pre-season
In any case, the pre-season figures are good. In the first four months of 2025, there were increases of three percent with 2.27 million tourist arrivals and four percent with 6.4 million overnight stays. In addition to the results from April this year, this was all further contributed to by the later Easter holidays. Easter brought a double-digit increase in physical tourist traffic over those four days compared to the earlier Easter of March 2024.
According to the Croatian National Tourist Board’s data from the eVisitor system, there were 1.57 million foreign tourists recorded over the first four months of 2025, as well as 4.8 million overnight stays. They are both increases of two and four percent compared to the same period last year.
