December 7 (SeeNews) - Foreign tourist arrivals in Croatia rose 14.7% on the year to 619,779 in October, with overnights up 18.7% to 1.96 million, according to data released by the country's statistics office on Wednesday.
Foreign tourists accounted for 86.2% of all overnight stays in October, the data indicated.
Tourism is a key industry for Croatia, generating around a fifth of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).
The number of domestics tourists increased 7.2% on the year to 147,308 in October, taking the total number of tourists to 767,087, up 13.2% on the year.
The number of overnights spent by Croatian citizens rose 1.0% on the year to 315,055 in October, taking the total number of tourist overnights to 2.3 million, an increase of 15.9% year-on-year.
Croatia's biggest feeder markets in October were Germany with a share of 29.2%, Austria with 9.9%, and the United Kingdom with 9.3%.
In October, the highest number of overnights, 1.4 million or 61.8% of the total, were spent in hotels.
In January-October, tourist arrivals in Croatia increased 8.3% and the number of overnights rose 8.8% to 76.9 million, of which 92.9% were spent by foreigners.
In 2015, tourist arrivals in Zagreb city and on Croatia's Adriatic coast rose 8.3% to 14.2 million and overnights increased 6.8% to 78.6 million.