Vir Island – A champion of the tourist season 2020

The island of Vir is this year’s Croatian tourist champion, and it was confirmed in October when, with 137,649 overnight stays, Vir again achieved more than anyone. With a total of 2,237,229 overnight stays since the beginning of the year, it has also significantly outperformed all other domestic tourist destinations, including islands.

In sports terms, the island of Vir routinely brings this tourist and championship season to an end without uncertainty about the final outcome. Vir significantly surpassed all other domestic tourist destinations from January 1 to October 31 with a total number of overnight stays of 2,237,229. In this year’s game of smaller numbers and the possibility to change something, both because of the coronavirus crisis and because of the end of the calendar year, the total lag of second-placed Rovinj of 413,465 nights or third-placed Medulin of 795,757 nights, makes such a mission impossible. At the end of the turbulent 2020, Vir will wrap a tourist laurel wreath around the Vir Ring, as the only Croatian destination that achieved more than two million overnight stays (as early as mid-September) and probably one of two or three domestic destinations that will end in an unprecedented travel crisis. Ballads have more than 1.5 million overnight stays. Apart from Vir and Rovinj (1,823,764 overnight stays), only Medulin (1,441,472) will reach this number, while for Poreč (1,368,046), Mali Lošinj (1,297,518), Crikvenica (1,280,200), Umag (1,263,153) and Novalja (1,224,116) to be a difficult and almost impossible task. The rest of the society in the top 10 of domestic tourism consists of Krk (921,291 overnight stays) and Zadar (920,445), but for these two destinations, the success will be represented by the million amount of overnight stays at the end of the year.

As much as Vir seemed to have unexpectedly landed on the domestic tourist throne, so far this fact is actually far from a real surprise. Vir has been in the 20 best tourist destinations in Croatia and the best in Zadar County for a whole decade, while this year it will record its fifth consecutive year in the top 10 domestic destinations. Therefore, it will be again in the elite of Croatian tourism, so it is difficult to conclude that Vir is a tourist unknown or a surprise. Second, the corona crisis only revealed the general weaknesses and shortcomings of most elite Croatian tourist destinations. Relying on the daily or so-called city break experience and guest traffic (three to four nights on average), or dependent on cruise traffic and major festival events, this summer these destinations signed a capitulation in July and August. From the beginning of the year to October 31, Dubrovnik recorded 798,558 tourist overnight stays, which is a catastrophic 18.8% of last year’s traffic in the same period (4,245,592 overnight stays). Split fared slightly better with 805,979 overnight stays and 29.8% of last year’s figures (2,706,163), and Zagreb with 31.6% (now 704,550, last year 2,226,654 overnight stays). That is why this year’s 86.8% share in the record numbers of overnight stays from 2019, realized in Vir, seem an impossible mission for all the best in Croatian tourism, with the exception of classic but significantly smaller weekend destinations – Dobrinj (85.9%), Vodnjan 77.9%) or Rogoznica (66.4%). Their success, as well as Vir’s overall triumph, draws attention to a new fact.

A significant number of foreigners own buildings on the island, family houses, cottages, apartments and suites, so their arrival in Vir – despite the crown – was less uncertain than the arrival of tourists in any other destination. What was uncertain was the question of the moment of opening the borders, so that Vir, with the first arrivals of foreigners on the Adriatic, quickly took a leading role in Croatian tourism. In July, it had about 700,000 overnight stays, and in August a record 770,000 this year, despite the fact that Croatia was already marked in red on the corona map of Europe in the last week of August. September confirmed Vir’s leadership with more than 300,000 overnight stays and cemented it in October when Vir had almost twice as many as Rovinj’s closest companion. The stamp for the whole year is imprinted with the decorative data that this year’s 137.6 thousand overnight stays in October are even 8.9% better than last year’s (126.4 thousand), which is a data that only Pirovac, Sveti Filip and Jakov can still boast of. and Funtana, but in the top 10 – no one else. In fact, Mali Lošinj had only a 47.5% share of last year’s turnover in October, and this is the best result of one destination within the Croatian top 10. Of course, after this year’s champion of Croatian tourism, the well-known island of record holders.

Source: Morski.hr