As Novac/Jozo Vrdoljak/Privredni.hr writes on the 25th of February, 2020, Kristijan Kapovic believes that the Vir Municipality will be able to rank next to the likes of Biograd, Vodice, Novalja and Pag in about fifteen years, in terms of infrastructure and utilities. According to him, the team he has been leading since 2003 has already managed to change the general Croatian perception of the Vir Municipality as a place of chaos.

He claims that the Vir Municipality has made the most progress in all of the Republic of Croatia. In the following interview, he explains why they have had a large population increase, who is settling there and the reasons for this island's progress. Vir is otherwise the destination with the highest tourist growth in the whole of Croatia and is ranked eighth.

What has happened in Vir in the last fifteen years?

''We're the place that has made the most progress, but we're not yet at the level of the destinations we want to reach. We'll be pleased if in the next fifteen years we manage to reach the level of the communal services of Novalja, Pag, Biograd and Vodice. During this period, we have to solve all of our communal problems, tidy up the public areas and get a nice visual ''stamp'' on it from the outside. In the last twenty years, the Vir Municipality has invested around 300 million kuna in its own large infrastructure: roads, the water supply and the sewerage.

Vir was seen as a symbol of chaos. Why is that?

''Vir was seen as a symbol of chaos, but it was never a place where chaos reigned. Most of the influential people who claimed and/or wrote that there was chaos on Vir had never even been to Vir. There was even talk from a person in a position of power that Vir was best off being destroyed. For decades, the islands of Vir, Pag, Ciovo and Rogoznica were perceived as symbols of illegal construction. It was difficult to prove that this was not really the case. The perception was the way it was because the concept of illegal construction in Croatia was perceived as chaos.

It's true that the facilities were illegally constructed and that no communal infrastructure was provided, but on the other hand, it was also true that these houses were built by people who had surplus money. All of these houses had projection plans and weren't just constructed without a plan. All of the illegally constructed structures were able to get all the connections needed, meaning that the state had in some way encouraged illegal construction.''

What have you done to make it different now?

''We've solved the problem of illegal construction, which is perceived as devastation in public. To change that perception, we first had to build the infrastructure. We had 10,000 illegal facilities, no sewage and water supply and no paved streets. With major investments in municipal infrastructure back in 2014, we made a connection to the water and sewage system. From 2015 to 2020, we have a situation in which half of people outside of Vir no longer speak ill of Vir. About fifteen years ago, there were less than 200 renters on Vir.

Vir had 30,000 arrivals and less than 300,000 nights, 90 percent of which were Croatian guests. Today, we have about 160,000 arrivals, of which 120,000 are foreign visitors from 77 countries who make up 2.65 million overnight stays. It is the eighth in [terms of tourism] in Croatia and by far the best in Zadar County. About 98 percent of this comes from private accommodation. We have grown from 2500 to 15,000 beds.''

Is there a possibility of building a larger hotel on Vir?

''Neither the municipal administration nor the Vir tourism company, which was founded back in 2007, will bring large tourist resorts to the Vir Municipality, but we'll try to improve our offer. The aim is to have a five star hotel in the next three years, for which we've secured a location in the very centre of Vir. In addition to the hotel, we're developing a project to build marinas and campsites which will also be of a high category.''

Besides tourism, what are the other economic activities on Vir?

''Tourism is the biggest magnet, not as an industry but as a phenomenon. Because of tourism, people bought land and built facilities. Vir has been developing construction, real estate and crafts. All major Croatian trading houses are on Vir. From the devastated communal system, we created a brand new one that employs 250 people on a permanent basis. We have four other public companies that employ a further 250 people.''

What's the reason for your population increase?

''Back in 1991, Vir had 860 inhabitants. Back then, there were more people from Vir living in Rijeka than there were on Vir. Previously, it lost about 30 percent of its population over a 30-year period. During the war, many people from the area of ​​central Bosnia, Posavina, Slavonia, Sisak and Karlovac moved to Vir. In 2001, Vir had about 1600 inhabitants. Migration continued in two more waves. In the second wave, we had immigrants of young people with families from Zadar, Rijeka, Zagreb, Sisak and the Karlovac area whose origins are from Vir, and young people who have homes on Vir and who believe that they have a better quality of life there.

The third wave of immigration is retirees who have homes on Vir. In addition to Croatia, there are more and more returnees from Austria, Switzerland, Germany and foreigners from all countries of Central and Northern Europe. According to the 2011 census report, Vir had 3032 permanent residents. In 2019, the Zadar Police Department recorded 4780 inhabitants. It's estimated that an official census of 2021 could see more than 5,000 residents.''

In the summer, the population increases significantly. How do you service them?

''When my colleagues and I took over the management of the Vir Municipality, we decided to put people first. In summer, more than 50,000 people live on Vir. For the last fifteen years, homeowners have been coming almost every weekend. To service them, you must have city-level communal services.''

It's often claimed that we have too many municipalities and cities. Do you agree with this statement?

''In Croatia, the administrative structure is excellent. It's often claimed that we have too many municipalities, but there are many more per capita in Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia. What these countries have, but no Croatia, is the powers of the mayor and mayor. By all indicators, all municipalities in Croatia have justified their existence, including the poorest municipalities in the Knin area. Everything our municipalities have done, they have done in the most centralised country in Europe.''

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As eZadar writes on the 27th of January, 2019, at the ITF Slovakiatour 2019, the largest Slovak holiday and leisure fair which is currently marking 25 years of existence, the Vir Tourism tourist agency set up a stand with gifts for visitors to the fair, and held a presentation of the Croatian island in which the hall was filled to maximum capacity.

''We did a good job presenting the island and its tourist offer, and after the presentation there was quite a lot of interest in Vir. Of course, we did business with tour operators, agencies and tourism journalists who were fascinated by the number of Slovaks going on holiday to the island,'' says Srđan Liverić from the aforementioned Vir Tourism agency.

Liverić and the head of the agency, Mate Čulina, carried out most of the work directly with the fair's stand which attracted the attention of not only Slovak travellers and tourists, but also the director of the Croatian Tourist Board for the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Dubravko Miholić, who joined the Vir locals a week earlier at a similar fair in in Brno, Czech Republic.

The Slovak part of Vir's tourism promotion was held from January the 24th to the 27th, with a presentation in Bratislava, the participation of numerous representatives of the Slovakian media, investors and business partners of Vir's destination companies. As a travel and leisure fair, ITF Slovakiatour is one of the leading trade fairs in Slovakia for the tourism and hospitality sector.

Slovakiatour is an excellent opportunity to present tourism products and services, and all visitors can get information from tour operators, travel agencies, hoteliers and airlines so that they can organise their own holiday plans. Exhibitors like Vir Tourism used the fair to interact with potential buyers of services and other representatives of the tourism industry.

''This jubilee 25th ITF Slovakiatour was the most visited so far, and as the only Croatian promotion booth, all the attention of the Slovaks interested in spending their summer holidays in Croatia was directed towards us,'' stated Liverić, reporting on a good job well done in Bratislava.

This year's ITF Slovakiatour brought together 350 exhibitors from many countries from across the world, from Croatia, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, China and the Dominican Republic to Iran, Kenya, Cuba, Austria, Italy, Morocco and many others.

The numbers speak volumes about the significance of the Slovak tourist market for Vir island. Slovaks made up 12,833 tourist arrivals and 108,612 overnight stays, representing a growth of 19.5 percent (10.742 in 2017) in arrivals and 18 percent in nights (92.049).

Along with Slovenes, Hungarians and Germans, only the Slovaks made up more than 100,000 overnight stays and 10,000 arrivals last year, with continuous tourist growth from that market for Vir.

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Click here for the original article by Kazimir Skrbic for eZadar

As Morski writes on the 27th of January, 2019, over the last five years, the island of Vir has been experiencing regular works on large communal infrastructure projects. This intensive work on Vir began back in 2013, and the completion of this process, ie the construction of a water and sewage network in all of the island's settlements, as well as the complete asphalting of the streets and setting up public lighting, is expected by the year 2025.

Then, according to Vir's mayor Kristijan Kapović, everything Vir has had going on in its ''makeover'' procedure will finally be complete, meaning that by 2025, the entire island of Vir will be a completely ''done up'' island. This means that all 10,000 buildings and more than 800 streets will be fully equipped in an infrastructure sense, all facilities will have access to water and the sewage system, along with newly asphalted roads, public lighting and renovated beaches. Owing to the velocity of works that need to be undertaken until 2025, the mayor has asked Vir's residents for their support and their patience.

Here's how that all looks in practice: Every day, hundreds of employees from the island's local utility companies Vir Maintenance and Vir Waterways, as the chosen contractor of works on the project for the construction of the water and sewage network, are working on the maintenance and installation of new public lighting systems and construction of connections to the water supply and the sewerage network island of Vir.

Parallel with the intensive implementation of the island's asphalting project, in 2013 and 2017, more than 75 kilometres of roads with about 200,000 m² of asphalt were completed, while the existing roads on the island are all maintained on a daily basis, their length can be measured in several hundreds of kilometres. Along with 200 brand new light fixtures, a huge amount of public lighting have been set up in all of the island's small villages, while around 500 new ones are in preparation for being set up over the next two years. More than 200 million kuna has been invested in all of these projects in total so far.

The implementation of the enormous project for the construction of Vir's water supply system and sewage network has been carried out in its first and second phases with the beginning of the third phase on its way. The Prezid settlement will soon become the new construction site for the construction of both water supply and drainage facilities for about 1,300 buildings.

''The entire island of Vir with all of its settlements, or about 7,000 buildings that are not yet covered by the grid, should receive water and sewage systems by the end of 2023, or in the first half of 2024. Once the large infrastructure pipes are placed in the ground, public lighting and asphalt will be placed in all the streets without such communal infrastructure. This will be accomplished by 2025,'' concluded Kapović.

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Click here for the original article by Kazimir Skrbic on eZadar

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