More than two-thirds or 67.4% of overnights were generated by foreign guests, accounting for 103,874 overnight stays, while the share of foreigners in arrivals was even bigger with 71.8% or 62,487 arrivals.
According to the figures provided by Zagreb County authorities, most visitors in 2017 were from Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Poland, with some tourists coming from the USA, China, Australia, etc.
The most visited cites in the county were Velika Gorica, Samobor and Sveta Nedjelja.
The director of the county tourism board, Ruzica Rasperic, said that more and more tourists are showing interest in active holidays in rural settings.
"Visitors are showing interest in active holidaying and one branch in tourism that we have particularly dedicated ourselves to, is cycle-tourism," she said.
About ten years ago, the tourism board prepared a bicycle track map and recently introduced the "ZG bike" app, she added.
The county recently completed a HRK 123 million project - Greenway - the first bicycle highway in Croatia along the Sava river stretching from the Slovenian border and continuing for HRK 121.6 kilometres.
County Prefect Stjepan Kozic underscored that the county is counting on health tourism and to that aim has launched a HRK 43 million project to reconstruct the Naftalan special hospital, the only one of its kind in the region that treats patients with oil derivatives. The only other hospital of this kind exists in Azerbaijan.