ZAGREB, 29 May 2021 - Adriatic states are a rich tourism whole but have a lot of untapped potential which should be promoted also outside the short and intense season, participants in a regional tourism project said in Subotica, Serbia on Saturday.

Landscape Days, held in the Zasavica Special Nature Reserve near Sremska Mitrovica, are part of the Adrilink project which encompasses ten partner cities in seven Adriatic countries - Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania and Greece.

The project partners in Croatia are the municipality of Mošćenička Draga and the town of Vrsar.

"The goal is a common vision of the landscape as a driver of the local development of the Mediterranean-Adriatic-Ionian economy, and the project envisages using modern information and communication technology to promote new destinations among tourists by making them more attractive, and to extend the season," said Svetlana Sabo, a member of the project team.

The Adrilink project lasts from 1 February 2020 to 31 July 2022, and one of its results should be a sustainable common strategy, new common itineraries, and linking ten interpretation centres in the seven countries though an app and a digital platform.

The goal is to offer tourists new challenges and the discovery of new natural and cultural landscapes such as nature reserves and the historical and cultural heritage.

ZAGREB, November 25, 2020 - Nine towns and municipalities in the central mountainous Gorski Kotar region on Wednesday signed an agreement on joining their local tourism boards into a single regional tourism board and presented a new master plan for the development of the region's tourism sector.

The new regional tourism board covers the towns of Vrbovsko, Cabar and Delnice and the municipalities of Fuzine, Mrkopalj, Brod Moravice, Skrad and Ravna Gora.

The regional tourism board will be based in Delnice and the towns and municipalities will establish their own tourism offices or information centres depending on their needs and possibilities.

The signing of the agreement was also attended by Tourism and Sports Minister Nikolina Brnjac, who said that Gorski Kotar was a destination whose potential had been growing on an annual basis.

She said that so far, not including Gorski Kotar, 18 tourism boards covering the area of some 90 local government units had already joined while six had joint projects. The purpose of their association is cost-cutting, better quality and joint presentation and destination development, Brnjac said.

The master plan for the development of tourism in Gorski Kotar has three key goals - increasing the visibility of destination development, greater tourist turnover and greater investments. The key products are active vacationing, excursions and gastronomy.

Presenting the master plan, Sinisa Topalovic of the Horwath HTL company, said that only 3% of regional revenue came from tourism, and most tourist accommodation capacity was privately owned. More than half of the accommodation units are one, two or three-star units and there aren't any in the five-star category for accommodation units, he said.

The growth i ncommercial accommodation is evident, as is an even greater increase in noncommercial accommodation, that is, holiday houses.

More than 50% of the local tourism boards' revenue were funds from local government units, while administrative costs accounted for more than 40% of their expenditure.

According to data from the Kvarner Tourism Board, this year there have been around 79,000 overnight stays in Gorski Kotar, as against around 110,000 last year. Gorski Kotar accounts for around 0.5% of the tourism turnover of Primorje-Gorski Kotar County.