The Ministry of Tourism and the Croatian Tourist Board are starting the program "Tjedan odmora vrijedan” (translates to English as "a week worth of rest"; the phrase rhymes in Croatian).
The goal of the project is to increase the interest of the people of Croatia for domestic travel, as well as increase the level of tourist activity in Croatia outside of the high-season summer months. The target audience are the tourists in Croatia, with the aim of encouraging them to engage in more tourist activities before and after the high tourist season.
This project will help all of the citizens of Croatia to get to know and visit different parts of our country, provide as much as 50 percent in discounts for them for various tourist products, including acommodation, transportation, entry fees to various sites, events...
The "Week Worth of Rest" project would take place twice a year, in October and March, and hrturizam.hr has unofficially found that the first one should take place in October of this year, in the period of October the 17th until the 27th.
The Ministry and the Croatian Tourist Board will invite all of the businesses which are tourist-related to participate and offer discounts during the week. All of the offers they prepare will be listed on the www.tjedanodmoravrijedan.hr, which is still not active but is owned by HTZ. The first public presentation of the project is expected to happen during July.
One question that will probably be raised related to this project is what happened to the somewhat glamorously announced project of the so-called "Cro Cards"?
Most people don't even remember that idea, which suggested giving the people who live in Croatia a type of a credit card where their employers could give them their bonuses which wouldn't be taxed and could only be spent in Croatia.
It has been a while since it was initially proposed, and it seemed that it was not really going anywhere, but in April of this year, Minister Cappelli said that the project needs to be worked on more. One of the obvious problems with the idea of the Cro Card as it is usually described, is that the EU doesn't really appreciate such ideas, in order to protect the single market of the Union.
So, we'll have to wait and see what will come of those projects, but it's safe to say that the Week Worth of Rest project might serve as a great incentive for continental tourism in Croatia, if people take it seriously and adopt a proactive attitude towards it.
