MIXED AUSTRIAN-CROATIAN TOURIST COMMISSION HOLDS TALKS

( Editorial: --> 0792 ) DUBROVNIK, July 30 (Hina) - Members of a mixed commission for tourism of the Croatian and Austrian governments on Thursday met in Cavtat, southern Croatia, for talks on cooperation in tourism, tourist promotion, and tourist information and booking systems. The two delegations were headed by Erich Musyl, head of the Department for Tourism at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Economy, and Croatian Deputy Tourism Minister Vinka Cetinski. Cetinski said that with 447,000 arrivals and 2.837,000 overnight stays in 1997, Austria was fifth among Croatia's tourist generating countries and had surpassed the number of tourists registered in 1990, the year before the war in Croatia. She added that in the past years, Austria had retained almost the same pre-war number of tourists visiting Croatia. Some 170,000 Austrians visited Croatia in the first six months of this year, which is nine per cent more than in the same period last year, and accounted for 794,000 overnight stays, or seven per cent more than in the first six months of 1997, Cetinski said. (hina) ha jn 301652 MET jul 98