Croatia :Guide to Airports and other tips

02/02/2017

Croatia

Forged in the furnace of the destruction of the former Yugoslavia, Croatia's initial birth pangs were traumatic, but today Croatia is part of the family of young and confident nations, under the umbrella of the EU.Like its neighbor Slovenia, it looks towards Europe and particularly Italy and the German-speaking world.

Croatia has 5,835km of coastline, which is surprising since the whole country is less than 60,000km2 of land.However, a glance at a map will reveal that Croatia is quite an odd shape, (which is advantageous as it is, therefore, blessed with a very long coastline and over 1,000 islands).Croatia comes in at 18th in the rankings for the most popular tourist destination.Tourism accounts for 20% of GDP( in cash figures that is $7.4 billion). There are 116 Blue Flag Beaches in Croatia.

Coupled with a Mediterranean climate and some delicious food, one begins to see why the beautiful sandy beaches of Croatia attract legions of tourists.

There are three main airports in Croatia:

Zagreb (Franjo Tudman Airport). The capital of Croatia had 2,766,000 passengers in 2016, (a 6.9% increase). The airport is located 6 miles southeast of central Zagreb and is the center of operations for Croatian Airlines.With the building of a new terminal, the airport will be able to handle up to 20 million passengers per year. Destinations include Paris-Charles de Gaulle (Air France), Vienna (Austrian), London Heathrow (British Airways), Moscow (Aeroflot), Berlin, Cologne/Bonn and Stuttgart (Eurowings).Croatia Airlines serves a host of European destinations; Emirates begins a Dubai service on 1st June 2017 and Turkish flies to Istanbul. The busiest route is Croatian's service to Frankfurt.

Split. A coastal airport, had 2,289,000 passengers in 2016 (up 17.1%).The airport is located 15 miles from the town of Split.As with Dubrovnik, it is principally busy in the summer with charter flights. However Croatian offers flights to Athens, Frankfurt,London and Paris all year round.Lufthansa offers a flight to Munich and Eurowings to Cologne/Bonn and Stuttgart. A new terminal was due to start in 2012 bringing the airport's capacity to 3.5 million, but to date, no construction has begun.

Dubrovnik. Also a coastal airport, had 1,993,000 passengers in 2016 (an increase of 17.7%). Sometimes known as Cilipi Airport, it is located 9.5 miles from Dubrovnik. The airport now has the most modern passenger terminal in Croatia: spread over 13,700m2 and able to accommodate two million passengers per year.An even bigger Terminal is planned in 2019, able to take 3.5 million passengers a year, with a large four-star hotel, and a longer runway.Though a mainly seasonal airport, British Airways operates a year round London-Gatwick flight, Croatian; Frankfurt, Rome, and Zagreb, Vueling also flies to Rome and Turkish goes to Istanbul. One curious fact is that, in the summer, All Nippon Airways operates charters from Osaka, Tokyo and Sendai. By far the largest airlines operating from Dubrovnik are Croatian with 25.68% of passenger numbers and Easyjet 10.05%.

Summary

Overall, (including all of Croatia's airports) since 2009, passenger numbers had leaped from 4,898,000 to 7,165,000 in 2015.Budget airlines such as Easyjet, Ryanair, Norwegian, and Jet2, are major players in the Croatian aviation market. The largest tourist numbers are from the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, Italy, and Slovenia (which has a very small coastline). Another curious fact is that about 15% of visitors are naturists.

Croatia is a great place to visit as a holidaymaker, or to do business in ,or to combine both activities.Its sultry southern european climate, warm blue sea and mile after mile of beaches make it a prime getaway location and it has the airline links to match.