With the boom of tourism in Slovenia, results of our continuous work are beginning to show. The number of arrivals and overnight stays in Kranj indicates that last year, this town has seen some significant growth in the tourism sector.
While in 2008 Kranj had 16,551 arrivals and 32,018 overnight stays, in 2016, we had 56,495 arrivals and 87,515 overnight stays. When compared to 2015, arrivals increased by 37 percent.
Last year, the occupancy level of the rooms in Kranj was 27 percent, which is a considerable increase from 2015 when it was 21 percent, but especially when compared to the years between 2008 and 2012 when it did not rise over 13 percent.
Visitors to the Tourist Information Centre in Kranjska Hiša are in most cases Slovenians, but many of them also come from Germany, Italy, Great Britain, France, Spain and other countries. There were 15,800 of visitors from abroad to this TIC in 2016, which was 6% more than in 2015 (14,905).
The number of tourists from abroad who have one or more overnight stays in Kranj has increased substantially when compared to 2014 and 2015. Least change can be seen for July and August, but also in these months the curve is rising nicely during all three years. It is evident from the data that the most registered tourists come from Korea. In 2015, there were 9835 arrivals by Koreans and in 2016 even 18821, which is an increase by 91 percent. With regard to the numbers, Koreans were followed by tourists from Serbia, Germany, Poland and Hungary last year.
When we take a look at the data on overnight stays, these have also increased for Koreans, even by 97 percent. Also the tourists from Hungary were a big surprise. They had 3007 overnight stays in 2015 and the next year, their numbers increased by 157 percent and in 2016 there were 7751 Hungarian tourists on overnight stays in Kranj.
In recent four years, tourism in Kranj has been growing with the annual average growth rate of more than 25 percent. Numbers of arrivals and overnight stays are rising at least twice as fast as in other Slovenian tourist destinations. So the projections are more than encouraging. More tourists will be coming to Kranj and staying here over night and this will have positive effects on our gastronomy, trade, tour operators and organizers of cultural and entertainment events. The Tourism and Culture Board of Kranj set a goal at the end of last year to increase the number of overnight stays to 100,000 by 2020. Based on the positive trends, it can be expected that it might be accomplished this year already.
