Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
successful, counties of Istria and Dubrovacka-
Neretvanska together comprise more than half
of all registered rural tourism projects.
Alongside small-scale tourism entrepre-
neurship, many large public-private projects
are in development. Targeting the top end of
the market, luxury hotels, resorts, wellness
centres and golf courses have been developing
through joint ownership between central and
local government. For example, for the Brijuni
Riviera project in Istria, with
€
5bn investment
and potential of creating 5000 new jobs, the
central government is investing 67% of the capi-
tal and the local county of Istarska the remain-
ing 33%. The project will include, in addition to
the renovation of three existing hotels, luxurious
villas, polo fields and golf courses, the building
of two new hotels, a new golf course and
a wellness centre (Pesut, 2005). Another
example is Park Prevlaka, on the border with
Montenegro, which already has a centre for
adventure tourism (team building, free climb-
ing, kayaking, paintball and cycling) and has
major plans to be developed in partnership
between the central government and local county
of Dubrovacko-Neretvanska. One billion euros
are being invested in a hotel resort with 2000
beds, wellness facilities, a conference centre, a
marina with the capacity for 300 yachts, a retail-
ing area and luxurious auto-camp with the
capacity for 1000 visitors, and the restoration of
a 19th century castle into a museum, night club,
wine cellar and luxurious restaurant (Pesut,
2005). Many public-private partnership 'green
field projects', are planned for central Dalmatia.
In terms of general infrastructure, the major
investment has been made in the construction
of highways connecting the main centres of
Zagreb, Rijeka, Split, Zadar, and Sibenik. The
most significant of these is the Zagreb-Split
highway, with a total length of 375.7 km (com-
pleted in June 2005) which has significantly
improved traditionally difficult road access to
central Dalmatia as a gateway for travel to the
Dalmatian islands. Dubrovnik remains relatively
isolated by road (there is an international
airport) whereby a car journey from Zagreb can
take up to 8 hours. Other tourism investments
for 2005 are shown in Table 22.3.
The changing industry structure reflects
recent policy development whereby the Office
for the Strategic Development of Croatia has
launched the strategic vision for Croatia in the
21st century with the central emphasis on tour-
ism, identifying specific objectives for Croatian
tourism to 2010 (USRH, 2002). The overall
rhetoric of the vision is based on principles of
sustainability where tourism will serve as an
agent of economic and social development in
peripheral regions whereby the preservation of
natural and cultural resources is conditional
for achieving the long-term sustainability of
Croatian tourism. The document promotes
product and spatial diversification, but with a
particular emphasis given to rural tourism
development to alleviate problems of peripheral
regions, especially depopulation.
Changing policies have been translated
into national marketing and branding by the
Croatian Tourist Board, which has changed its
previous slogan of 'Small country for a great
holiday to the Mediterranean - as it once was',
which is meant to connote authenticity, atmo-
sphere, rurality and nature, with no 'artificial'
additives (N. Bulic, 2002, personal communica-
tions). The projection is thus the image of an
implicitly pre-mass package culture and envi-
ronment. Whereas under the general heading
'About Croatia', the Adriatic Sea, heritage and
cuisine are still dominantly promoted, the
'Tourism plus' link lists the diversity of various
activities, such as horse riding, cycling, diving,
pilgrim tourism, health tourism, kayaking, raft-
ing and adventure racing. The significant tourist
investment made by the central government (as
clearly shown in Table 22.3) represents a differ-
ent trend from the post-Communist reduction of
the role of the state elsewhere in CEE (Light,
2000; Hall, 2004).
Culture Versus Conformity
In our previous two sections we presented the
overview of tourism development in Croatia
from the 1960s to today. The economic indica-
tors based on quantitative figures of tourist flows
and investments reveal a number of structural
changes at national, regional and product
level. At this point we want to return to our cul-
tural perspective to deconstruct structural and
de-personalized accounts and draw on our 'inti-
mate' experience of Croatian tourism through
our personal and professional lives.
