Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Zadar Airport is continuing negotiations with its Chinese partners concerning potential flights. Despite plans for Hainan Airlines to establish one weekly charters between Chongqing, in China's southwest, and Zadar last year, these did not materialise. Zadar Airport's spokesperson, Nikola Barać, explains, "Discussions are still in progress. Two Croatian delegations have been to China (Beijing, Chongqing and Shanghai), while two Chinese delegations visited Croatia. Their representatives were shown the touristic, cultural and economic potentials of the Zadar region. The Chinese administration is exceptionally demanding, so more efforts will be needed to influence the Chinese. However, Zadar Airport will not give up on its efforts to open up such a wide market like China". The head of the Chinese Southeast Europe Business Association (CSEBA), Mario Rendulić, who initiated talks between Zadar Airport and the Chinese, previously said that Zadar is still relatively unknown and undiscovered by Chinese tourists. “We are still just a dot and we are working on changing that. We still don’t have any brands that could attract Chinese tourists”, Mr Rendulić noted. In recent years, Croatia has seen a surge in travellers from China, with a little over 60.000 visiting in 2014. Zadar Airport believes a Chinese carrier could carry up to 25.000 passengers during their first year of operations and could eventually introduce scheduled two-weekly flights.
Out of this 60.000 more than 1/3 (22.000) was in Zagreb. So, what is the logic that CSEBA try to force ZAD instead od ZAG, SPU or DBV. And than they are surprised that those flights did not materialized.
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