High marks for all aspects of the offer

Tourists are very pleased with all aspects of the offer in Zagreb, including accommodation facilities, gastronomy and cultural events, while more and more visitors are arriving for short city-breaks, looking for new experiences, entertainment and culture.

More and more tourists are visiting Zagreb for short city-breaks in pursuit of entertainment, new experiences and culture.
The average age of tourists is 40; 65 percent have concluded higher education, and every other tourist that stayed in a hotel last year was visiting Zagreb for the first time. These are the results of the sixth Tomas survey of tourists’ attitudes and  expenditures, conducted by the Institute of Tourism in 2012. The survey has been conducted since 1998, but last year’s was the first that covered an entire year. It comprised a total of 1832 interviewees staying in 18 hotels and 4 hostels at 17 different locations in the city.

Today, Zagreb has 48 hotels with 3637 rooms and 194 suites. Almost 60 percent of these are four and five star facilities, unlike 15 years ago when such accommodations only accounted for 37 percent of the offer. The four and five star hotels currently account for a 65 per cent share of all commercial accommodation capacities, while the hotels account for four fifths of all overnights in Zagreb. Although domestic guests are still leading in terms of the number of overnight stays, foreign demand for accommodation in Zagreb’s hotels is on the rise, primarily in the summer months. Germans, who traditionally account for the most overnight stays, are closely followed by tourists from the United States, Italy, Great Britain and Austria. Last year, guests from these countries accounted for a quarter of all overnight stays in Zagreb's hotels, 63 percent of which were between May and October. In comparison, in the same period, hotels in other European cities had 58 percent of their capacities filled, mostly during the months of July and August.

Apart from an increasing number of new guests and a relatively stable share of second time visitors, there has been a decline in the number of loyal guests who have visited Zagreb more than three times, a development mostly related to domestic demand. At the same time, the number of business guests is again on the rise after the decline which was recorded over the past few years and accounted for by a change in the motives for visiting. One of the explanations for the statistical increase is the fact that the last survey covered the entire year of 2012, unlike the previous surveys which covered only the period between May and October. Domestic guests and visitors from the region arrive mostly for business purposes, while American and Japanese tourists visit Zagreb for new experiences and to get to know the city's landmarks. Most hotel guests visit in order to gain new experiences, have a short city-break and become familiar with the city's landmarks. A total of 78 percent of last year's foreign tourists visited Zagreb for the first time, while for 65 percent of them it was their first trip to Croatia all together.

The changing trends in the motives for visiting Zagreb resulted in shorter hotel stays, causing the percentage of guests staying just for a night or two to go up. During their stay, most guests opt to go sightseeing in the Upper Town as well as in the downtown areas. Almost 80 percent of them patron restaurants and other catering facilities,  every fifth tourist uses the services of tourist information centres,  and more than 40 percent use taxi-services, while a third opts for public transportation. Unlike hotel guests, most of whom stay on the beaten path and visit well known attractions in Zagreb, hostel guests partake in all activities to a much greater extent. Apart from that, the results of this survey indicate a significant increase in the level of satisfaction of hotel guests in comparison to the surveys conducted over the past few years,  notwithstanding the lower expenditure levels as a result of the economic crisis which has slashed travel budgets.

According to the survey results, there is a high level of guests’ satisfaction with all aspects of the offer, ranging from hotel accommodation, to gastronomy, to cultural events. Tourists have also given the highest marks to the city’s infrastructure, with the exception of parking where they would like to see improvements. These results have not been achieved overnight, nor are they a product of individual work, but rather a joint effort of all the tourism professional. Not only has Zagreb recorded a double digit increase in the number of hotel stays, but it has also received numerous recognitions by users of various online travel portals as well as social networks who consider the Croatian capital to be one of the top must-see destinations in Europe.