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.

September 28, 2020 – The tail end of 2020's unparalleled summer offers opportunity for pause, contemplation and appreciation, as it's loyal and not luxury guests that have saved this year's Croatia tourist season.

In this day and age, things always have to get better. There's no room to sit still. Life without improvement is deemed a failure. Nowhere is this more true than the Croatia tourist season.

The numbers of overnight stays in the Croatia tourist season sometimes seem to be the only measure by which its success is judged. Year after year, the numbers must rise. Any decrease is unthinkable. At the same time, hungry eyes still want more. Some want to reposition themselves. A new class of guest is wanted, from faraway nations. They must be of a better quality. They must stay longer, in more expensive dwellings. They must spend more.

Incredible initiatives are undertaken to turn this want into a reality. But, at the end of the 2020 Croatia tourist season, perhaps it's time to pause and reflect. For this year, it is undoubtedly loyalty and not luxury that's saved the Croatia tourist season.

In the year the coronavirus pandemic hit, arrivals by charter plane and cruise ship were seriously curtailed. So much for the flying visits of premium guests from far-flung lands. Instead, the tourists who came were from much closer to Croatia.

The English language that most on the coast are so familiar with was this year useless. On the beaches of Istria and northern Dalmatia, it was Slovenian, Polish, Czech, German, Slovakian and Italian that was heard. The packed bars of Makarska echoed with the familiar call of 'Đe si, bolan?' (where are you, bro? - in Bosnian dialect). Many of those who came drove to Croatia. And many do so every year.

© Jeremy Segrott

Sighs and light-hearted jokes about some of these guests persist in some places. “That family come every year, but they only ever order one pizza to share between the four of them.” The choice of footwear of some German-speaking and Czech visitors frequently draws chuckles, in particular, the classic sock and sandal combo. But, just where would the 2020 Croatia tourist season have been without the 60,000 Czech and Slovak visitors who this year arrived by train?

Just two days ago, Jutarnji reported on phenomenal numbers of Polish visitors this year. Would anyone else really have taken the place of the returning family of four sharing a pizza? Just what would the season in Makarska have looked like without bolan?

Croatians are famously very appreciative hosts. On the ground, there's no doubt that such loyal guests are warmly welcomed and thanked each year by accommodation renters, restaurateurs and others. They greet returning visitors with smiles of familiarity and reserve for them their favourite place. In September 2020, gratitude to such guests was echoed by The Croatian National Tourist Board as they launched a new campaign 'Thank you', directed at the tourists who this year chose Croatia.

Perhaps it is time to ensure that this gratitude extends into any grand new initiatives for growth in the Croatia tourist season? Such loyal guests should not be taken for granted, nor forgotten.

Initiative within the Croatia tourist sector is vital. The unlocking of continental Croatia's potential is simply a must. That too of the Dalmatian hinterland and inland Istria. The exploitation of world-class Croatian assets such as nature, agriculture and health and wellness services are also perfectly on-point. The desire to attract a better class of bigger-spending visitor to luxury holidays on the Croatian coast should surely be a lower priority. After all, eyes that covet can all too frequently fail to appreciate that for which they should already be thankful.

© Oddman47

Lead image adapted from an original photograph by © Marco Verch

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June 8, 2020 - A few weeks ago, Index.hr and Dalmatian portal (Dalmatinski portal) published an article which presented some devastating results by analysing the work of tourist boards in Croatia. Pokret Otoka has done something similar. The Solta tourist board stood out in particular...

The person responsible for discovering this "phenomenon" is the British journalist Paul Bradbury, who, with his experiment, once again drew attention to where taxpayers' money actually goes. If you didn't know, Bradbury contacted the Croatian National Tourist Board, which shared the public e-mail addresses of all tourist boards to help them in their business. Namely, they were offered free marketing assistance during these challenging times caused by the COVID-19 crisis, since some budgets were drastically reduced, while some even had their salaries reduced (from 4 to 20%). It is important to point out that the mayor of Sucuraj on Hvar was the only one to react by abolishing the Tourist Board in his municipality until the situation stabilises.

But let’s get back to the published article. Paul sent the offer mentioned above to 319 addresses. Only 26% of them opened the mail, and only 18 of them accepted the offer, not as a percentage but in a total of 18 tourist boards. Surprised by the results, he published his findings in the media and interested the public.

Many questions arise: Why have the employees of tourist boards turned down a great opportunity to have part of their work done for free by an expert, especially since some of them have already had their salaries reduced and their budget for marketing activities has gone down with it? We really wonder, like most of the public, what these individuals are paid for and how tourist boards contribute to their communities, with what results they participate in the overall tourist traffic of the destination, how they promote it and what they will do now when strategic changes are needed such as innovation, digitisation and all sorts of new skills for the general survival of the tourism market?

Here, we want to emphasizse that we do not think that all tourist boards are useless, we don't have accurate and relevant insights into their work, but some individuals were obviously prompted to consider the work of the tourist board on the island of Solta and present their business analysis to the public.

Duje Mihovilović, originally from Solta, made an effort and shared several facts from the publicly announced business plan of the Tourist Board of Šolta for 2019. He is a young, educated person who has been involved in tourism for the last ten years and has the skills of digital marketing, social networking, and the segmentation of new customers. At a time when he sees the market changing and turning to sustainability, quality, natural resources, and local values, customers will be reached with new technologies and digital tools.

“The tourist board promotes the island through social networks, through the Visit Solta platform, which includes Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. The goals of this direct communication with the target groups are an increased number of guests and consumption and an enhanced emotional connection with the destination (brand building). The realisation of the stated goals will be carried out through the activities of managing social network pages in English through the frequent generation of content (photos and videos) and communication with members."

Current status on social networks:

The expected result of the campaign on social networks is an increase in Facebook page followers to 15,000, and 2,500 followers on Instagram and an increase in video views on YT by 15,000. The planned costs for 2019 amount to HRK 60,000.00.

Currently, the Facebook page of TZ Solta has 14,560 followers, out of the planned 15,000 in 2019. Realistically, even then, it was not a challenging number or an ambitious goal, but, unfortunately, it was not achieved half a year after the planned period.

However, looking at communication with target groups makes it clear why the number of visitors is not increasing. Namely, from the beginning of this calendar year until today (June 4), six publications were published, of which the Tourist Board wrote 1 (one!) about Solta. This is a post related to the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic. Other posts are news feeds from other portals. Unlike last year, nothing has changed - in 2019, 14 announcements were published, and the tourist board's employees wrote none of them.

On Instagram, the situation is a little worse than it was last year. They have published four posts since the beginning of the year, but the authors are different people. The number of followers is 2096, and 304 are missing from last year's goal. Considering that half of this year has already passed, on average, their publishing pace is worse than it was last year. In 2019, a total of 21 announcements were published, approximately every seventeen days. This time we will not talk about the quality of posts, the use of #hashtags, or key messages.

Official website:

While doing the analysis, Duje was intrigued by the price of maintaining the website, which costs HRK 10,000 per year. We believe that everyone who runs any company, association, or trade and has a website knows that it is paid once, while maintaining the domain costs several hundred kuna. Of course, some sites need frequent content changes and technical and graphic improvements. Still, this site does not fall into that category, and the only changes it makes are the calendar of events on the island, of which there are many and which appear somewhat confusing. Additionally, even the structure of the page is not an author's original work, but an existing template was used, which cost the creator of the page the equivalent of about twenty dollars.

The Tourist Board of Solta has been employing two people since 2019, who, in addition to their duties, including travel expenses and the presentation of islands at fairs (about which we failed to find an announcement), planned to spend a total of HRK 300,000.

Besides, every year from May to October, four tourist information centres are opened: Maslinica, Rogac, Necujam, and Stomorska. Money amounting to HRK 125,000 is planned for their work, which includes the costs of salaries and offices.

The total planned budget for 2019 amounted to HRK 1,125,000.00, of which HRK 490,000 was planned from the budget of the Municipality of Solta. You can find more details in the document and evaluate the quality and purpose of this island tourist board.

At the end of the presentation, as he sees the whole situation, Duje commented: “Solta doesn't have enough opportunities to develop and it depends largely on tourism, like most other islands do. You, Solta locals, do not exist on that map! The money in this story is being thrown into the wind. In the current situation that has destroyed tourism, your tourist board has done absolutely nothing!”

On the Facebook group "Solta - for each other", the topic resonated loudly. This is a topic that concerns all islands and all islanders. Do we want to discuss it publicly and start to make a change from our city/municipality/village/local board? The crisis that is yet to follow will affect the entire system of the economy and life in general, our future depends on how we're going to act and live in the coming months. And again, the responsibility lies with all of us.

Read here this article in Croatian.

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