June 29, 2020 - Part 7 of Ivica Profaca's Diary of a Split Tour Guide in the Age of Corona - you can start at the beginning here.

As a dedicated filmgoer, I just couldn't help it but think about a quote from Godfather (later also used in The Sopranos), which nicely describes feelings about the Coronavirus revival. You probably heard it before, it's famous Michael Corleone's "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" And it's really like that.

It's been more than a month since my last diary entry on Total Croatia News. Since May things looked maybe not good, but better. At one point, at least with the epidemiological situation in Croatia, one could have thought something like "So, this is how it will look when pandemic fades out." However, with borders opening, and an almost complete return of almost normal life, it was obvious that it might hit back. And it did. In only a few days, with a boost from the Adria Tour tennis tournament, the opening of night clubs, a few church events and imported cases from other countries (mostly those in the region), Croatia climbed up from zero to 95. If you regularly follow Total Croatia News COVID news, you probably know everything about. If you don't, follow it.

The new rise of COVID cases in Croatia (I believe this is not the second wave) created a big question mark above my head, and many other heads. Two days ago Croatia had the second biggest number of new daily cases ever (95, compared to 96 in April), and it brought a lot of questions. If we were completely locked down with 96, and I do believe it was a good decision, how come that with 95 cases we have all stores open, tourists coming in, night clubs working, beaches opened with barely respected restrictions, people sitting in bars and restaurants, masses, weddings, funerals, public transportation, etc. Whatever you can think of that was closed or banned less than two months ago, now is open, with only a few exceptions.  Experts are racing with explanations, so anyone can try to follow, but in case you were obeying what Civil Protection HQ was saying before, and have a basic fear of risky population being infected, what to do now? Well, maybe it will be more clear after the elections scheduled for July 5. I don't think every single thing or move depends on that, but some decisions definitely do.

To make things even more confusing, at least for me, is that I'm not sure if borders had to be open so soon, and so wide. Now there are restrictions for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Northern Macedonia, all passengers need to stay in 14-days self-isolation. On the other hand, it's easy to travel from some of the most affected European countries, like Sweden or United Kingdom. Actually, the only obstacle is the lack of flights. Some of the lines will be re-opened in July, and then it will be even easier. Did you see images from English beaches a few days ago? Well, are we sure we want to accommodate them in the name of reviving tourism? In spite of the fact that I will lose some jobs, I'm closer to a negative answer, because if we rush, the finale might be postponed. Some will say "You are panicking, change of reaction on a new case is proof that Coronavirus is just a big scam". Call me whatever name you like, but I really don't think such claims deserve a reply.

This growth of new cases number brought also some problematic interpretations, not in Croatia but abroad. For example, The New York Times published a colored map, with Croatia being the only European Union country painted in red, which always means alert. They used a very strange methodology; calculated in percentages increase of seven-days average of new cases in previous two weeks. Thus, Croatia looks like a disaster, because the average number rose from 0.7 to 46 in the period observed. Theoretically, some country could have had an increase from 1000 to 10,000, and it would still be below Croatia.

By coincidence, a new outbreak arrived at the same time with the first new booking in my calendar in months. I think the last one I received was sometime early February. A group of four wants tours in Split and Trogir, and a full-day trip to Hvar, in late August. Looking at that e-mail was like meeting an old friend.

Will it really happen? I have no idea, just as it's completely uncertain what will happen with the last bookings still alive in 2020, all of them in September and October. Besides those two new dates, there are only seven that survived. Last season it was my weekly average. Knowing that most of them are from other continents, it's hard to believe in having those jobs done. Even harder with the recent announcement that the EU might ban US, Brazilian and Russian travelers when it reopens its borders on July 1. I promised Paul Bradbury that I will write a story about the first post-COVID tour, but even if you like what I write here you will have to wait for some more time, unless something suddenly changes. I can only regret not being good enough as a student to learn German, because some dear friends among the guides had this year's premiere with some of those few tourists, mostly from Germany and Austria, who arrived in Split.

Catching up with bookings became very dynamic. When I started writing this piece, I had a total of ten dates booked, including two that just arrived. Then, halfway through, I checked the news in the cruise industry, and found out that the last ship I had booked was cancelled. So, don't blink too long, who knows what can happen.

We will be following Ivica Profaca's journey through the rocky weeks ahead.

If you find yourself in Split, or are planning a post-corona visit, check out his range of tours on his website - families, look out for the kids tour of Diocletian Palace. It will not only entertain your kids while allowing you to absorb this unique UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it will bring out the inner child in you too. Learn more about it here. 

You can read other parts of Ivica's Split Tour Guide in the Age of Corona series here.

(To be continued)

May 12, 2020 - Part 6 of Ivica Profaca's Diary of a Split Tour Guide in the Age of Corona - you can start at the beginning here.

There is not so much normal in "the New Normal". Following the stage three of softening anti-COVID measures (Total Croatia News extensively updates all info on the pandemic in Croatia), I wrote a blog for the Tourist Board of Split with the hope that opening things might really move the whole society up, especially the economy. In some ways it does. Among other things, it's possible to travel around Croatia, in some cases even crossing the national border without a two-week quarantine. You can now have a drink, or a meal in bars and restaurants, with some restrictions, and get together with up to 40 people. There are flights, buses and trains in Croatia, hopefully there will be some international ones soon, too. British Airways and Ryanair already announced their flights from June, easyJet never took their flights off their website. Hotel openings were announced, although not on a very big scale. Maybe it's not great, but it looks good, at least as a start. The situation with the virus is also promising, even with the latest outbreak on the island of Brač.

All this brought hope for different segments of the tourism industry that there might be something out of this year's season. Shops, cafés, bars, restaurants, etc. might really have some traffic. It's miles away from what they all got used to, and if you ask people in these segments they will tell you that the future is not really bright, maybe just black turned into grey.

On the other hand, what does all this mean for guides? Much less than to those in the previous paragraph. Along with some other fellow guides, I was asked by T-portal reporter about prospects of this season, and the verdict is pretty much unanimous. We can't hope for anything serious before September. A wild guess is that most tourists will be those from other parts of Croatia. They will bring some work to accommodations, or to those selling drinks and food. Guides? In years of doing this I can hardly remember if I ever had a request from Croatian tourists for a tour. Maybe it's about saving money for other stuff, or maybe people coming on vacation usually do sightseeing on their own. This is not an objection, just a fact. After all, even when I travel abroad I do the same; do my homework, and then research on my own. It can't be compared with guidance by an experienced local guide, and I enjoyed those few times when I hired someone, but those are the usual habits.

In the last few days there were also some events which make relying on September and October too optimistic. Firstly, all the main tourism markets are still COVID-active, some of them extremely active. On a day when I write this, the number of confirmed cases in Germany tripled, the UK passed over Italy and France in both cases and deaths, plus they have more deaths than Spain. As expected, the epidemic in the USA is still raging. Border openings? Only two days after Croatia announced that passengers coming from other EU countries will not need a quarantine, a plane from Frankfurt brought at least a dozen new cases, possibly more still waiting to be confirmed. With the regime softening in most European countries in the last week or so, we still need to wait for some time before it will be proven that everything went well.

Almost at the same time when some airlines announced re-launching of their flights (with others giving up their plans), bad news came from cruise companies, which bring many clients to guides. There are no ships cruising around at least till the end of June, some companies berthed their vessels till the end of July. Holland American Line made a step forward, or backwards, and made a move that might become a faith for the whole industry; they simply cancelled their operation for the whole of 2020.

On the home front, it means that the number of cancelled jobs for this year is now officially bigger than those still alive, even with included bookings already postponed to 2021. On this date in 2019 I had a few dozen jobs already done, this year it's five since the New Year. Of those five, three were brought in by friends who wanted to do a favour to someone. Now even big September hopes look more and more like a bubble with few new cancelations in that month. Months before September are already almost empty. State support called Program of saving jobs affected by COVID ends next month, and the situation won't be better than when we all applied for it two months ago. Actually, it's even worse. Not to mention that the danger of COVID is still present, and safety must come first. I'm not sure I would be delighted with the prospect of passing through possible crowds created by further regime softening, not to mention ideas of huge events like Ultra Europe, with people coming mostly from those countries I mentioned before in this writing.

So, to conclude - the possibility of putting big X across 2020 is bigger and bigger.

We will be following Ivica Profaca's journey through the rocky weeks ahead.

If you find yourself in Split, or are planning a post-corona visit, check out his range of tours on his website - families, look out for the kids tour of Diocletian Palace. It will not only entertain your kids while allowing you to absorb this unique UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it will bring out the inner child in you too. Learn more about it here. 

You can read other parts of Ivica's Split Tour Guide in the Age of Corona series here.

(To be continued)

April 12, 2020 - Part 4 of Ivica Profaca's Diary of a Split Tour Guide in the Age of Corona - you can start at the beginning here.

Ever since I started working as a guide, this was going to be my sixth season, I was trying to be as meticulous as possible in running my assignment calendar. Or, in more recent times, calendars. It might be a professional disorder inherited from my daily journalism days, with my addiction to deadlines and article size precision. As soon as I would get a new booking, the whole series of administrating moves begins; write it in the excel table, sorted by dates. Then Google Calendar, which notifies me half an hour before the appointed hour. Then calendars in different online platforms or applications, where I need to delete tours I offer on different dates. For example, if I get a morning assignment from some agency, I block that date for morning tours which I have online, and usually leave those scheduled for afternoons. The last time when I counted, I was maintaining four different calendars, plus excel. I know, there are apps which can do it at once, but I just don't trust them. I'm pretty sure I would end up with double bookings, or miss an important one.

When it comes to payments, I'm even worse. Minutes after I come home after any guiding job, I send an invoice. It's not because I'm especially dedicated, I'm just afraid that if I wait until the next day, not to mention a longer period, I would just forget it. Even with clients who make me send an invoice once a month, I create it at the beginning of the month, and then update after every job. The last day of the month, it's gone.

I described this because for the last two months of Corona, this whole procedure looks like an "undo" command in computer programs. I get a cancellation (because there are no new bookings) for, let's say, some date in May. When I delete it from excel, I enter it in another excel table named Cancellations 2020. Of course I don't really need that, but with self-diagnosed minor OCD of counting, and running statistics it's there, don't ask. You never know, says my little OCD ghost, maybe it will be useful someday. Then I turn to calendars. It's easy to delete it (or change date) in Google Calendar. But, when it comes to online platforms, it gets more demanding. Now I re-schedule all those tours which were deleted or blocked when the original booking arrived, and it takes some time of careful going from one web site to another. Again, I'm completely aware that if, for example, guests cancelled a tour on April 25 due to the COVID-19 situation, no other booking will arrive for that same day. However, it gives the impression that I really am doing something about this season. Completely useless, but I do it. After all, the days are getting longer, and it takes more effort to make them pass while staying home, even with some other jobs I do, like writing or translating.

I learned to act that way when I was forced to start working at home ten years ago, after almost twenty years in different newsrooms. Unfortunately, many people are experiencing it in the Corona Age. You probably know that - how to force yourself to change from pyjamas into barely decent clothes, or comb your hair before work nobody sees you doing it. Well, to play with calendars and jobs which will never come is my way to create a new normality, no matter how abnormal it actually is. It's like that even in more leisure parts of the day, with wine parties over Zoom or some other communication app. Until "all this" stops, and we begin turning back to normal normality. If possible. And it will stop, I'm still optimistic.

Those two excel spreadsheets I run - Bookings 2020 and Cancellations 2020 - go in opposite directions, the first one is still bigger, but the latter is approaching faster then I want. As I said before, bookings were poor anyway, because they stopped sometime in January or early February, but what is really worrying is the steady stream from one spreadsheet to another. The whole of April is now gone, May is emptying, only dates later in that month still stand, but it's hard to count on those bookings will surviving. Later, prospects are a little bit better, but for now it's in the hands of the virus and those trying to stop it.

Some countries have announced the possibility of softening their lockdowns, but it's hard to say how that will work. Maybe more than ever before, countries will depend on each other in the post-Corona economy. That dependence is not whether they will help each other (I hope they will), but how to re-open any economy, if most others are still locked. What's the use if Croatian airports, harbours, borders, museums, bars and restaurants open, if nobody can come? What's the benefit for Croatian tourism (or most of other industries) if Croatia continues doing a good job (or at least it still looks like a good job) in stopping COVID-19, if it still ravages some of our main markets?  That's why I believe that the dilemma of whether or not to concentrate on the economy, or on stopping the pandemic is mostly false. There is no economy if the pandemic is alive.  When it stops, my calendars await, I'm looking forward to filling them. So many things to do.

We will be following Ivica Profaca's journey through the rocky weeks ahead.

If you find yourself in Split, or are planning a post-corona visit, check out his range of tours on his website - families, look out for the kids tour of Diocletian Palace. It will not only entertain your kids while allowing you to absorb this unique UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it will bring out the inner child in you too. Learn more about it here. 

You can read other parts of Ivica's Split Tour Guide in the Age of Corona series here.

(To be continued)

April 5, 2020 - Part 3 of Ivica Profaca's Diary of a Split Tour Guide in the Age of Corona - and some good news!

This is an easy job to do. I can just start every part of this series with something announced, or predicted in the previous one. Last time I was hoping that my application for financial aid through the Government's program aiming to help industries affected by COVID-19 would be accepted. And it was. It was great to get an e-mail with a PDF document attached saying "your request has been accepted", or something like that. Sure, it's nothing even close to those notes, now almost forgotten, with sentences from another world: "Are you available on that-and-that day for a tour?". From time to time, I read some of those still sitting in my inbox, just as a reminder.

Anyway, me and a whole bunch of fellow guides (and thousands of others) will get State aid, and with the second package that the government prepared, now things look a little better. Or, if you want, as well as can be expected, because I guess nobody is too excited at being on State aid. With the second package, the monthly payment will go up to 4,000 kuna, with paid tax, health and pension insurance, for a wider population affected by these measures. It means that the government finally accepted the demands coming from people in the business world. Problems are probably yet to come, because the national budget masters will have to find that money somewhere. We'll think about it tomorrow, Scarlett O'Hara would say, hopefully someone is making plans.

Speaking of plans, everything really depends on how long the pandemic will last. That's a zillion dollar question, and only a few dare to give any prognosis. I mean those who might really know something. There is a whole army of those others, much louder, making it difficult to differentiate what is worth listening to. Will it be June, or we can't expect any good news before September, with prospects of a second wave next autumn and winter? The phrase "anything is possible" these days has a special meaning. Besides, with the death toll rising minute by minute, what's the point of looking for anything else, but how to stop this horrible chain of events? 

When it's done, other things should come back, including tourism. easyJet, an extremely important airline for tourism in Split and Dalmatia, is already advertising Summer 2021 Holidays. Just a little bit more optimistic is their Winter 2020/2021 advertising. Unfortunately, still no sign of an extension of seasonal flights to Split by any airline. Maybe when that priceless question gets some more firm answers there will be someone who will come up with the idea of turning November into the new April, just like Zoran Pejović suggested in his Total Croatia News article. There are still no ideas how to do it by  the Croatian tourism authorities, but maybe they could take this idea into consideration. In previous parts of this series I have already mentioned that I still have more postponements than cancellations, and that trend is still the same. Maybe it will change sooner than I want, but so far it's like that. Some of those bookings still don't have a new date, but are waiting to see how the situation develops, but they are still active. The last one I got of that kind is a group of hikers from Taiwan who wanted to hike Kozjak mountain mid-June. The date is cancelled, but with a note "they will definitely come when crisis calms down". It's a thin hope, but what else do we have?

Speaking of easyJet, like all other airlines, they have their planes grounded (except for emergency flights). However, you can still book a flight from London to Split from May 1. All those before that date are marked as "sold out", it's probably some IT solution for not to delete flights. I can only try to imagine the level of lack of information with someone who would really book a flight as early as the beginning of May. Or perhaps they know something we don't know. But seriously, who can even remotely believe anyone would travel in just a few weeks from now? Not only by air, but by any means of transportation. It would be fun to make that booking, just for the sake of imagining the faces of those who would receive a notification that someone wants to fly. I would offer a free tour.

Of course, this little anecdote about easyJet is not something that should be taken as a strategy foundation. When I get first queries for availability, or at least some info request, that will be something to build on. Everything else is still in "one day it will pass" domain. For example, recently I saw an article on Travel Pulse, US-based website specialized in travel news. Pledging that "all is not lost", they found five destinations as "beacons of hope". Guess what? Croatia is one of them, and main photo of the article is the one from Split. Or, what about predictions made by Luxury Travel Advisor?

It worked twice so far; I mentioned something in these articles, and it happened before the next part of this series. Maybe the same will happen with those two. Stay posted, and if you know someone who would need a tour this summer, let me know. Until then, #StayHome.

We will be following Ivica Profaca's journey through the rocky weeks ahead.

If you find yourself in Split, or are planning a post-corona visit, check out his range of tours on his website - families, look out for the kids tour of Diocletian Palace. It will not only entertain your kids while allowing you to absorb this unique UNESCO World Heritage Site, but it will bring out the inner child in you too. Learn more about it here. 

You can read other parts of Ivica's Split Tour Guide in the Age of Corona series here.

(To be continued)

Ever wondered what it’s like being a tour guide in Split?