After an extremely successful business year in 2022 National park Plitvice Lakes records excellent results already at the very beginning of 2023.
In the first 45 days of this year, the number of visitors increased by 5% compared to last year, and the number of overnight stays by 6% and by even 12% more compared to the record year 2019. This step forward is especially important because it is about the winter months when tourist movements are reduced, and the market of the East, which in the pre-pandemic years was filling empty winter capacities, has not yet come to life.
The Plitvice Lakes National Park has for many years been the bearer of the development of the local gastronomic offer and thus supports local producers of food, drinks and souvenirs and is a leader in the sustainable development of Lika.
Through the project Gastro Academy of the National Park, which has been educating staff through specialized training for five years in a row, the quality of the performance has been significantly raised as well as the gastronomic offer has been enriched with a significantly larger share local ingredients at the park.
The gastronomic offer achieved record results with increased turnover of 23% compared to 2022 and 51% compared to the record year 2019.
"Without the development of domestic production, we cannot expect the survival and development of our region. Only with local producers who enrich our offer can we develop our villages and thereby contribute to the demographic and economic development of the entire destination. In recent years, Lika has been profiled as a branded destination of protected areas and a gastronomic destination, and we are very careful about sustainable progress. We like to observe every tourist development with caution so that the destination does not spontaneously enter the "tourist monoculture" and that there is no imported food on our table. Also, all factors should participate in the development, and the architecture should be under a special magnifying glass because errors cannot be quickly corrected here." emphasized the director of the National Park Tomislav Kovačević.