Croatia Travel Blog

Archive for December, 2009

So you’ve been to Istria and you want to set up house there? The Financial Times has a highly informative article covering all aspects of buying a house or apartment in Istria whether for a residence or a rental property. From feuding families to bureaucratic hurdles the buyers profiled in this article managed to overcome it all to build their dream houses.  Unlike the fevered buyers that swept down from the UK a few years ago, today’s buyers are more likely to be Italians and Slovenians than Brits.  Russians are also entering the picture even though non-EU citizens must obtain government approval of a property purchase. It’s true that the property market in Croatia has cooled down this past year but Istria remains a good investment as well as an extraordinarily good place to live.

Go to article.

Read more about buying property in Croatia or about Istria.

Low-cost carrier Easyjet has launched a major new expansion into Croatia with the following new flights to be launched in 2010:

• Amsterdam-Split three times weekly from July 10
• Basel to Split twice weekly from June 26
• Rome to Dubrovnik four times weekly from July 11
• Rome to Split three times weekly from July 10
• Berlin to Split three times weekly from July 3

I’m particularly pleased to see the flights from Rome as I know it’s been on the wish-list of many Croatia visitors.

See more about flights to Croatia.

A ferry from Venice to Dubrovnik and on to Greece has been on this Mediterranean traveller’s wish list for a long time. There once was a ferry from Venice to Split (it ended several years ago), and before the War (early 1990s) I believe there was a ferry from Dubrovnik to Corfu or Igoumenitsou in Greece. But for too long the only Italy ferries to Croatia were from Venice or Trieste to Istria, Bari to Dubrovnik, Ancona to Split, Ancona to Zadar and sporadically scheduled summer ferries from a few other Italian ports.

Now it seems as though Mediterranean tourism officials are getting their act together to launch a new ferry route from Venice to Dubrovnik to the Greek ports of Corfu and Igoumenitsou. Talks are very preliminary, mind you but just last week Dubrovnik’s mayor met with a major Croatian Travel industry official to set up just such a route.

“We shall try to make an arrangement with the Greek company as soon as possible, and we will prepare a Letter of Intent that we will jointly finalize with the Greeks by the middle of January next year” said Mayor Andro Vlahušić (as reported by the Dubrovnik Tourist Board).

That sounds very promising. We are holding our collective breaths.

See more on Dubrovnik ferries, and ferries to Croatia.

Just a few days ago, Irish low-cost carrier, Ryanair announced a new route to Zadar in spring 2010. Now we have the information. Flights from Brussels (Charleroi) to Zadar will begin Thursday, April 10 and run through the season on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Prices start at EUR14.99. Of course, if you know Ryanair you know that there will be a few extras

See more on flights to Zadar.

The online price comparison site, trivago.co.uk recently compared European beach destinations to find out where, exactly, visitors were happiest. It turns out that Dubrovnik scored an astounding number 5 out of the 50 destinations reviewed. So how was customer satisfaction measured? By analyzing over 380,000 hotel reviews posted on online booking sites like booking.com for more than 4,000 hotels. It turns out that the 47 reviewed hotels in Dubrovnik have an average rating of 78.77 points out of 100. The five-star Hilton Imperial Dubrovnik lifted the average quite a bit by scoring a whopping 89 out 100 on the scale.

I say congratulations to the hoteliers of Dubrovnik. It looks like all the renovation, construction, reconstruction and upgrading has paid off big time.