Croatia Tours with Flights from €1,165

The standard Croatia coach tour runs Zagreb to Dubrovnik, or the reverse, with Plitvice Lakes National Park, Split and Hvar threaded in between. G Adventures' 7-day Zagreb to Dubrovnik: Parties & Plitvice Lakes, from around €1,195 before flights, is the trip to measure the rest against. Explore!, Intrepid and On The Go Tours all run a similar shape in the €1,400-€1,700 range over 8 days, with slightly smaller groups and a few more meals included.

A realistic day-by-day: two nights in Zagreb, a half-day at Plitvice, an overnight in Zadar or Sibenik, two nights in Split with a Hvar day trip, a long coastal drive south to Dubrovnik with a Korcula or Peljesac wine stop, then two nights inside the Dubrovnik walls. The pace is moderate, though roughly one day in three is a long bus day, which matters because the coastal road is all curves and nobody wants to eat lunch on a mountain switchback.

Reckon on walking 6 to 10 km a day over cobbles and ramparts, especially in Dubrovnik. Most tours throw in daily breakfast and two or three dinners; the rest of the lunches and dinners are on you at €15-€30 a head in the tavernas, more in Hvar and the Dubrovnik old town. Entry to Plitvice (roughly €40 at peak) and the Diocletian's Palace cellars is usually bundled into the price.

Croatia is the one country where sailing genuinely rivals the coach for first-timers, so it is worth two minutes on the trade-off.

G Adventures' Sailing Croatia trips (7 to 8 days, €1,400-€1,900) put you on a small yacht with eight to fourteen others. The cabins are tight, a double berth and a bathroom the size of a phone box, but you wake up in a different bay every morning, and that never gets old. Katarina Line and Gulliver Travel run mini-cruiser ships, 30 to 40 guests with proper cabins and above-deck dining, in the €1,500-€2,200 range; the feel is closer to a river cruise than a yacht.

Sail Croatia and Go Croatia Sail go after the 18-35 and 30-49 party crowds. Go Croatia Sail's 4-day Split to Dubrovnik Classic Plus, from around €570, is essentially a floating bar crawl with swim stops. Brilliant if that is what you came for, a very long week if it isn't.

MedSailors and The Yacht Week sit at the higher-spending party end, and the Yacht Week is less a tour than a flotilla festival, at €600-€900 a head before food and fuel.

Go by coach if you want Plitvice, Zagreb and inland Croatia in the mix. Go by sail if it is swimming, islands and waking up offshore you are after. Can't decide? Do a 7-day coach and bolt a 3 or 4-day sail onto one end.

The main Dalmatian islands run in a rough line south from Split. Hvar is the famous one, all lavender fields, a 16th-century fortress above town and the nightlife that made its name. Brac is quieter, and home to Zlatni Rat, the shifting pebble spit on every Croatia postcard. Korcula is the walled mini-Dubrovnik where Marco Polo may or may not have been born. Vis is the furthest out, the most peaceful, and the Mamma Mia 2 island.

Jadrolinija runs the main ferry network. Split to Hvar town takes an hour on a fast catamaran (about €10) or two hours on the car ferry into Stari Grad (about €7 as a foot passenger). Split to Vis is 2.5 hours. Korcula from Dubrovnik is a Krilo catamaran, two hours, around €27. In July and August book your ferries 2 to 4 weeks ahead, as walk-up tickets sell out regularly on the popular runs.

A do-it-yourself four-island week from Split realistically runs two nights Hvar, two nights Vis, two nights Korcula and an overnight in Dubrovnik. It is doable, but you will spend a real slice of each day on boats. Group sailing tours cover the same loop without the ferry faff, and usually come in cheaper once you fold in the hotels.

If you only have time for one island, make it Hvar for the view from the fortress, or Vis for the quiet.

The coast has a tight good-weather window. June and September are the two ideal months: the sea is swimmable (20-24°C), highs sit at 25-28°C, and the old towns are busy without being crushed. Shoulder-week prices land close to the lower end you will have seen quoted, so you get the best of the season for not much more than its cheapest.

July and August are peak. Dubrovnik's old town gets genuinely overwhelmed between 10am and 4pm, when cruise ships can tip 5,000 day-trippers into a place with 1,500 residents. Hvar doubles in price. Operators add 15-25% surcharges and flights from Europe jump €100-€200. The swimming is glorious and the evenings are long, but you pay handsomely for both.

May and early October are the value sweet spot. The water is cooler (18-21°C), some island bars and restaurants are still cranking up or already winding down for the season, but Plitvice is at its loveliest and tours drop 10-15%. Easter through mid-May is fine for the cities and lakes, if a touch chilly for swimming.

November through March is the off-season, and many island hotels and restaurants shut up shop entirely. Zagreb keeps going all year (its Advent Christmas market is superb), Plitvice stays open and eerily quiet, and Dubrovnik is lovely in a woolly-jumper sort of way. A handful of operators run winter city-focused trips at 30-40% off.

You have three realistic gateways, and the right one comes down to where your tour begins. Split (SPU) is the most useful for sailing trips and Dalmatian coach tours. Dubrovnik (DBV) is where most Zagreb-to-Dubrovnik itineraries finish, and a fine standalone base. Zagreb (ZAG) is the capital gateway for tours that start inland or take in Plitvice first.

From the US, Croatia is a one-stop trip for most of the year. United runs a seasonal nonstop from New York (EWR) to Dubrovnik in summer, but otherwise you connect through a European hub (London, Frankfurt, Munich, Paris, Amsterdam or Istanbul) on the way into Split, Dubrovnik or Zagreb, for roughly 11-13 hours door to door from the East Coast and 15-18 from the West. Reckon on US$700-$1,100 return from the East Coast in the shoulder months, US$1,100-$1,600 over the summer peak, and a touch more from Los Angeles or San Francisco. Book three to five months out, and earlier for July and August, when the seasonal routes fill fast.

From Australia it is a long-haul with no nonstop and usually two connections, one through a Gulf or Asian hub (Emirates, Qatar, Singapore Airlines) and then a European leg into the coast, for roughly 24 hours door to door from Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. Return fares run around A$1,900-$2,700 in the shoulder and A$2,700-$3,600 at peak. A stopover in Dubai, Doha or Singapore on the way through is the kind way to do it.

From Canada, expect one stop through a European hub year-round (Air Canada and the European carriers via London, Frankfurt or Munich), 11-13 hours from Toronto or Montreal; budget roughly C$950-$1,600 return depending on season.

From the UK and the rest of Europe, the coast is cheap and direct in summer. Croatia Airlines runs the national network and links Zagreb to most European capitals year-round, while Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air fly into Split and Dubrovnik from London, Dublin, Manchester, Berlin, Milan, Paris, Vienna and a dozen other cities between April and October, before most routes go dark for winter. Return fares from Western Europe typically run €90-€180 in May, June and September if you book 6 to 10 weeks out; the July-August peak climbs to €180-€320 return, so book 3 to 4 months ahead, and winter flights via Zagreb or a connection through Frankfurt or Vienna run €200-€350.

If your tour is one-way Split to Dubrovnik (or the reverse), an open-jaw flight usually costs the same or within a whisker of a return to a single city. Well worth it, since it spares you a 3.5-hour bus or ferry backtrack at the end of the trip.

On Multiday.tours you will see live Kiwi fares next to the tour price, in your own currency, so you can size up the full cost for Zagreb-in, Dubrovnik-out, or any combination, before you commit.