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Eastern Europe: Curiosity extends further east

Tourists walk on the city wall that rings the historic town of Dubrovnik, Croatia. More than 200,000 visitors are expected in Croatia this year, up from 154,000 last year, according to the Croatian National Tourist Office. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
The Spokesman-Review
Tourists walk on the city wall that rings the historic town of Dubrovnik, Croatia. More than 200,000 visitors are expected in Croatia this year, up from 154,000 last year, according to the Croatian National Tourist Office. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

“People keep heading east,” said Concierge.com editor Peter Frank. “People who’ve done Paris and Rome and Florence and Madrid, they want to see what else is out there.”

Publishers are responding with a slew of new books, including Frommer’s “Eastern Europe” and new DK Eyewitness Travel guides on the “Czech & Slovak Republics,” “Cracow” and a “Top 10 Dubrovnik & the Dalmatian Coast.”

“There’s still a curiosity about the former Communist countries and what they are really like,” says Douglas Amrine, DK Eyewitness Travel publisher.

With so many of these countries now in the European Union, travelers rightly perceive that “the infrastructure will be there” in terms of hotels, restaurants and customer service to accommodate them, Amrine says.

For bargain-hunters, the U.S. dollar goes further in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe. But high-end travelers will also feel at home in a spate of new luxury hotels, from the Mandarin Oriental Prague to a Four Seasons in Budapest to the high-tech Domina Grand in Ljubljana, Slovenia, Frank said.

And while the number of Americans visiting places like Croatia is still relatively small – 154,000 in 2006, compared with more than 2 million to Italy – growth is strong, up from 115,289 Americans who visited in 2005.

More than 200,000 are expected in 2007, according to the Croatian National Tourist Office. AAA’s bookings to Croatia increased an astounding 440 percent this year over last.

“It’s the alternative Riviera,” Frank explains. “Unspoiled. Beautiful. Great beaches, great food.”

What will be the next Croatia? Van Tiggelen picks Montenegro, also known for beaches and good food.

Travel writer and editor Pauline Frommer says the recent James Bond movie “Casino Royale,” which was set in Montenegro, helped pique American curiosity about the place. But her prediction for “the next Croatia” is Bulgaria.

“It’s right on the cusp of being discovered,” she says.

Elsewhere, Talin, Estonia, and Riga, Latvia, offer “beautiful medieval cores that are still preserved,” according to Frank, while Frommer calls Ljubljana “a fairytale city.”