Experimental Statistics: Short-Stay Accommodation in Croatia Offered via Online Platforms
NOTES ON METHODOLOGY
Purpose of the statistical survey
The purpose of publishing data for experimental tourism statistics is to show the collaborative economy in the area of short-stay accommodation booked via online platforms in group 55.2 Holiday and other short-stay accommodation according to the NKD 2025. The activity of booking accommodation via online platforms is most prevalent in the group 55.2 Holiday and other short-stay accommodation.
The data have the status of experimental because, for the purposes of this analysis, Eurostat obtained privately-owned data directly from online platforms for the first time. The methodology for processing these data is still under development and does not meet all the standards of official statistics, which is why the data are considered experimental.
Data sources for these experimental statistics are four online platforms: Airbnb, Booking, Expedia and Tripadvisor, which cover the largest part of the short-term accommodation market.
Data on accommodation booked via these platforms are currently not included in the official statistics on tourist accommodation occupancy, which are compiled in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 692/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 July 2011 concerning European statistics on tourism. Users will be informed in a timely manner about the possible inclusion of these data in official tourism statistics.
Legal basis
The survey is conducted according to the Annual Implementation Plan of Statistical Activities of the Republic of Croatia for 2026 (NN, No. 145/25) and Regulation (EU) No 692/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 July 2011 concerning European statistics on tourism.
Confidentiality
Due to data confidentiality rules, only aggregate data for all four online platforms from which these data were taken are published.
Observation units
The observation unit is an establishment that provides short-stay accommodation services and is classified according to the NKD 2025 in the group 55.2 Holiday and other short-stay accommodation, as well as advertised on one or more online platforms for booking tourist accommodation: Airbnb, Booking, Expedia and Tripadvisor.
Sources and methods of data collection
The data on short-stay accommodation for tourists are collected from four online platforms: Airbnb, Booking, Expedia and Tripadvisor, which act as intermediaries between accommodation providers (hosts) and users (tourists). These platforms collect data on accommodation bookings and realised nights on a daily basis.
Eurostat, on behalf of the European national statistical offices, has concluded a data-sharing agreement with the aforementioned platforms, and aggregate data on occupancy of short-stay accommodation for tourists are taken over. The first data were taken over for 2018 and 2019. Eurostat takes over partially aggregate data on occupancy of short-stay accommodation for tourists in the EU Member States and EFTA countries offered by accommodation service providers via online platforms. The aggregate data are forwarded to the national statistical offices, in accordance with bilateral agreements, in strict compliance with the rules of statistical confidentiality.
The data in these experimental statistics were not collected from administrative sources, but exclusively from the databases of online platforms that enable the booking of short-stay accommodation, and collect the data on bookings of accommodation establishments and the number of tourist nights in their databases on a daily basis.
Coverage
The survey covers establishments providing short-stay accommodation services in the Republic of Croatia, classified according to the NKD 2025 in the group 55.2 Holiday and other short-stay accommodation, and the accommodation is booked via one or more online platforms used for booking tourist accommodation that are the data source for these experimental statistics: Airbnb, Booking, Expedia and Tripadvisor.
Tripadvisor, which has been contributing to this data set since 2018, announced its exit from this activity at the end of 2024 and will no longer provide data in the future. The data from 2025 cover three online platforms: Airbnb, Booking and Expedia.
The rental of short-stay accommodation for tourists booked via online platforms, as part of the collaborative economy, is predominantly carried out in the group 55.2 Holiday and other short-stay accommodation. Therefore, data on bookings and nights in hotels (group 55.1 Hotels and similar accommodation) and campsites (group 55.3 Camping grounds and recreational vehicle parks), which are also advertised on the same online platforms, are excluded from the data coverage.
The activity of renting out tourist accommodation, which is a part of the collaborative economy and is carried out via online platforms, is most represented in short-stay accommodation, which is classified according to the NKD 2025 in the group 55.2 Holiday and other short-stay accommodation. This group includes the provision of accommodation, typically on a daily or weekly basis, principally for short stays by tourists/visitors, in a self-contained space consisting of complete furnished rooms or areas for living/dining and sleeping, with cooking facilities or fully equipped kitchens. This may take the form of apartments or flats in small free-standing multi-storey buildings or clusters of buildings, or single-storey bungalows, chalets, cottages and cabins. This accommodation offers very few, if any, complementary services.
According to the Ordinance on Classification and Categorisation of Accommodation Establishments in the group Other accommodation establishments (NN, Nos 54/16 and 69/17), the types of accommodation establishments are the following: rooms, apartments, studio-type suites, summer houses, overnight accommodations, vacation establishments for children, hostels, mountain lodges, hunting lodges, pupils’ homes or students’ homes or akademis and Robinson-type accommodation establishments.
In Croatia, all legal and natural persons providing overnight accommodation services, as well as natural persons who provide accommodation services in a household or on a family farm, according to the Ordinance on the eVisitor System (NN, No. 43/20), check in and check out tourists via the eVisitor system, the central electronic system for checking in and checking out tourists in the Republic of Croatia. Therefore, tourist nights realised within the collaborative economy are already included in the national accommodation statistics dealing with tourist arrivals and nights.
Definitions
The term collaborative economy refers to business models in which activities are carried out through collaborative platforms that create an open market for the temporary use of goods or services, often provided by natural persons or individuals. The collaborative economy includes three categories of participants, which are defined as follows.
• Service providers are natural or legal persons who use online platforms to offer services and goods or make assets, resources, time and/or skills available, and may operate occasionally (non-professionally) or as part of a registered activity (professionally).
• Users are natural persons or legal entities who find and contract services or goods offered by service providers on online platforms and use them. A user is considered to be a person who, in the reference period, used an online platform to organise accommodation, transport or other services offered on the platform.
• Intermediaries connect service providers and users via an online platform and enable their interaction (collaborative platforms). Platforms establish a digital market, facilitate communication and contracting of services, and often provide additional features such as payment processing, a rating system and management of usage rules. As a rule, they do not provide the core service, but act as intermediaries in its implementation.
Online platforms for booking short-stay accommodation are platforms that enable a direct connection between service/goods providers and users (tourists). The most well-known such online platforms in EU Member States and EFTA countries are Airbnb, Booking, Expedia and Tripadvisor.
Short-stay accommodation occupancy indicators
Bookings (stays) indicate the number of rentals of an accommodation unit made via online platforms in the reporting period, regardless of the number of tourists or the length of stay. Example: If a room/apartment is rented out three times in a month → number of bookings = 3.
Number of nights rented out indicates the number of nights in which the accommodation unit was occupied (rented out) in the reporting period, regardless of the number of tourists. Example: If a room/apartment is rented out three times in a month, each time for two nights → number of nights rented out = 3 × 2 = 6 nights.
Tourist nights indicate the total number of nights spent by all tourists in the accommodation unit in the reporting period. Example: If a room/apartment is rented out three times in a month, and four tourists stay for two nights each time → 3 bookings × 4 tourists × 2 nights = 24 tourist nights.
Bookings (stays), the number of nights rented out and tourist nights are three interrelated but methodologically different indicators.
• Bookings (stays) are an indicator that measures the frequency of rental (how many times a unit has been rented out).
• The number of nights rented out is an indicator that measures the duration of rental (how many nights a unit has been occupied).
• Tourist nights are an indicator that measures the volume of overnight stays (how many nights all tourists have realised in total).
Example of occupancy indicators:
If a family of four stays in an apartment for three nights, this represents:
• one booking
• three nights rented out
• 12 tourist nights.
Tourism means the activity of visitors taking a trip to or staying in a main destination outside their usual environment for less than a year, for the purposes of leisure, business or other personal purposes other than to be employed by a resident entity in the place visited.
Tourist is any person who, outside his/her place of usual residence, spends at least one night in a hotel or some other accommodation establishment for reasons of rest, recreation, health, study, sport, religion, family, business, public missions or meetings. Excluded are persons residing at a place for longer than 12 consecutive months, persons whose main reason for visiting is an activity that is financed from the place of visit, persons who travel to their work place or an education institution on a daily or weekly basis, persons coming into or going out of the country as migrants, frontier workers, diplomats, consular representatives and military force members on their regular duties, displaced persons, nomads and persons in transit.
Domestic tourist is any person permanently residing in the Republic of Croatia who spends at least one night in a hotel or some other accommodation establishment outside his/her place of permanent residence.
Foreign tourist is any person permanently residing outside the Republic of Croatia who temporarily resides in the Republic of Croatia and who spends at least one night in a hotel or some other accommodation establishment.
Definition of cities in tourism statistics
Cities are that local administrative unit (LAU) level in which at least 50% of the population lives in urban centres. An urban centre is defined as a cluster of connected grid cells of 1 km² with a density of at least 1 500 inhabitants per km² and a total population of at least 50 000. A city may include several local administrative units.
For the purposes of these statistics, only selected cities are considered, i.e. cities that meet at least one of the following criteria:
a) capital cities
b) cities with at least 200 000 inhabitants
c) other cities in the country that together account for 90% of the total annual tourist nights in that country.
Based on these criteria, for the purposes of tourism statistics, Zagreb, Pula – Pola, Split and Zadar are included in the coverage of cities.
Territorial constitution
The National Classification of Statistical Regions 2021 (hereinafter: HR_NUTS 2021) is a statistical standard used for collecting, processing, analysing and disseminating regional statistics data by levels of spatial division of the Republic of Croatia. HR_NUTS 2021 is the statistical basis for an efficient conduct of regional development policy, for making socio-economic analyses and for achieving the goals of social and economic cohesion. It is a hierarchical classification establishing statistical regions of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd level, according to which the territory of the Republic of Croatia is broken down for the purposes of regional statistics, as follows:
• The statistical region of the 1st level (hereinafter: HR NUTS 1) is the Republic of Croatia as an administrative unit.
• The statistical regions of the 2nd level (hereinafter: HR NUTS 2) consist of four non-administrative units created by grouping counties as lower-level administrative units.
• The statistical regions of the 3rd level (hereinafter: HR NUTS 3) consist of 21 administrative units (20 counties and the City of Zagreb).
The data on bookings and tourist nights realised in short-stay accommodation via online platforms are presented according to the HR_NUTS 2021 classification at level HR NUTS 1 (NN, No. 125/19).
All other information about the methodology is available on the Eurostat website – links:
Experimental statistics on short-stay accommodation offered via online collaborative economy platforms
In individual tables the total sum does not equal the sum of individual figures due to the rounding of figures.
Abbreviations
EU European Union
Eurostat Statistical Office of the European Union
EFTA European Free Trade Association
km2 square kilometre
NKD 2025 National Classification of Activities, 2025 version
NN Narodne novine, official gazette of the Republic of Croatia
LAU local administrative unit