According to today’s, August 11, 2016 post at glasistre.hr, the CEO’s of local Istrian tourist boards have alarmed, or are planning to do so, the Tourism Inspection because of discrepancies in the numbers of available beds and the number of tourists visiting the Istrian peninsula. The eagle eyed directors of the local tourist boards have spotted some illegal campers and holiday house owners which aren’t paying the visitors tax and are thereby hurting the local tourist boards pockets. Some go so far to analyse the numbers of other tourist boards of the region.
The newspaper quotes four tourist board directors and they each presented their own version and theory of where and how some ten to twenty percent of tourists in Istria are hiding and how they plan to put an end to that practice by all legal means necessary. We support them in their efforts to bring order in the process of registering people staying in Istria - in their free time, but would like to see them showing the same effort in what local tourist boards should primarily do. According to the Law about Tourist Boards, their tasks are:
1 Encouraging and initiating the development and improvement of the existing tourism product, initiating the development of new tourism products...
2 Promotion of the “tourist product” of the area for which they were founded.
3 Development of awareness of the importance and economic, social and other impacts of tourism, and the need and importance of preserving and improving all elements of the tourism product of a certain area, and in particular the protection of the environment and natural and cultural heritage in line with sustainable development.
Policing is the job of the police, while the Tourism Inspection’s job is to see that everyone plays by the rules.
