Šolta: "An Ode" to the Tourist Board

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.

Follow our travel page for more.