Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Versus Conformity
Irena Ateljevic and Sanda
C
orak
Introduction
when speaking from the experience of a non-
aligned country that experienced freedom of
mobility during much of the Cold War era (e.g.
Allcock, 1991).
Within this context, the chapter addresses
the most critical issues and implications of EU
enlargement for Croatian tourism over the next
decade. First, the Yugoslav wars of succession
in the 1990s, also coincided with an apparent
early decline stage of tourism development
based on the traditional '3S' market. With
consumers seeking cultural and more active
experiences (e.g. Morgan and Pritchard, 2000),
the concentration of simple sun and sea con-
sumption could not sustain continuous tourism
growth. Equally, local and global forces have
created pressures for restructuring and reposi-
tioning
When speaking of the implications for Croatian
tourism of the enlargement of the European
Union (EU), one important aspect needs to be
stressed in comparison to other Central and
Eastern Europe countries (CEECs). Croatia, as
a former republic of the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ), was not part of
the Soviet bloc. Notably, up to the end of the
1980s, Yugoslavia was generating more hard
currency tourism income than the rest of CEE;
Croatia generated the lion's share of this. It was
predominantly Western tourists who travelled
to the Adriatic coast freely without any visa
requirements, whilst people from CEE had to
go through difficult paperwork in their own
country. They could only travel on business and
package tours organized by their companies
and often with the goal of socialist 'ideologically
sound' holidays. Milan Kundera writes in many
of his books (e.g. Kundera, 2002) about
Czech(oslovakian) dissidents who used their
travel to Yugoslavia to escape to the West.
From the early 1960s, Yugoslavia devel-
oped 'market socialism', where federal devolu-
tion and private sector expansion was allowed,
particularly in the area of tourism. Questions of
interregional flows and the overall restructuring
of both tourism production and consumption
in CEE (e.g. Hall and Danta, 2000; Coles
and Hall, 2005) take on a different dimension
of
the
Croatian
tourism
product
at
destination and national levels.
Conflict speeded the emergence of Croatia
as a newly independent state, but it also
severely damaged the tourism industry (Ivani
c
and Radni
c
, 1996) and demanded a re-imaging
away from pejorative notions of 'Balkan-ness'
(Hall and Danta, 1996; Todorova, 1997),
to create a clear and positive national brand
(Hall, 2002). Paradoxically, the opening of
political borders and the end of conflict in and
around Croatia saw new emerging tourist flows
from CEE in the mid-1990s providing a
short-term fix which, in conjunction with transi-
tional
political
and
economic
complexities,
