Peljesac Bridge to reduce hassles for long-suffering travelers

Jan Skov and his wife Winnie, a Danish couple who own four holiday homes in Komarna, a small village in southern Dalmatia along the Adriatic Sea, have had many bookings since last summer.

"This year is even better than we usually have, up 50 percent," Jan Skov said.

Walking through the small village near the newly built Peljesac Bridge, it is easy to spot workers putting finishing touches to holiday homes that are being built or upgraded as the summer tourist season approaches.

Many more holiday accommodations are being built not just in Komarna but all over the coast, Jan Skov said.

The new bridge is widely seen as a reason for a surge in local tourism, he said, and another is people's hunger for travel after the pandemic.

Miljana Borojevic, director of the Korcula Tourist Board, said that while the opening of the Peljesac Bridge last year brought an influx of tourists, the full impact will be seen in a couple of years.

"The locals, of course, are pleased with the bridge opening," Borojevic said. "It makes travel much easier and faster, in addition to not having to cross state borders."

Since the bridge opened to traffic on July 26 last year, more than 1.33 million vehicles had crossed it by April 17. Daily flow during last summer's tourist season averaged 15,000 vehicles.

Before the bridge was built, people traveling between Croatia's mainland, such as the biggest coastal tourist city of Split, and Dubrovnik, a major tourist city on the Mediterranean, had to pass through the Neum Corridor, a 9-kilometer stretch of coast that is part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

It meant having to go through four time-consuming border checks, often with long queues during summer. In addition, the checks have become much stricter since Jan 1 this year when Croatia became the 27th member of the passport-free Schengen Area.

"The border checks, especially in summer, were such a hassle," said Selma Knudsen, who has a holiday home in Komarna. She hated having to explain to border and customs officials why she had bottles of wine and other items in her vehicle, she said. "It's definitely easier now."