A welcome in 30 languages

Zagreb is intensely promoting itself as a tourist destination in distant markets, so guests visiting the Croatian capital can obtain brochures in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and, as of recently, Arabic languages.

In the first nine months of this year, Zagreb was visited by 15 percent more foreign tourists than in the same period last year. As always, most guests arrived from Germany, the United States, Italy and Great Britain, but what gave tourist professionals particular pleasure was the fact that guests from Japan and the Republic of Korea were also among the top ten.

This, of course, is no accident. The Zagreb Tourist Board is very active on the Far-East markets, so that Zagreb is increasingly perceived as an attractive and desirable tourist destination in China, India, South Korea and Japan. Zagreb had a tourist brochure in Chinese ten years ago, and it has adapted its website for tourists from that specific market. Brochures have also been translated into Japanese and Korean, and Zagreb has been included in the most popular Chinese online search engine, Baidu. For several years now, the office of the Zagreb Tourist Board has participated in specialized tourism fairs in China (Dalian, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Kunming, Hong Kong), and financed promotional videos featuring Chinese, Japanese and Korean people who live in Zagreb, or have visited the Croatian capital, who share their experiences of the city and tell the viewers what they like about it. At the initiative of the Zagreb Tourist Board, Zagreb has a licensed Chinese speaking tour-guide, which is a major selling point with Chinese travel agents, as well as two guides who speak Japanese.

In order to be an even better host to guests from all over the world, the Zagreb Tourist Board has recently had its brochure “Zagreb – All of the City’s Colours” translated into Arabic, the 30th language it is being printed in.