New study on status and perspectives of Croatian tourism

August 2007. Even though there are many studies on Croatian tourism, there is hardly any involving the main players of Croatian tourism industry. Within our strategic partnership with the Economic University of Zagreb, Roland Berger Strategy Consultants along with economy students Ana Beč and Vanja Budimski conducted a joint study involving more than 50 key players from Croatian tourism across the entire value chain.

The outcome was quite interesting: even though the figures for guest arrivals and overnight stays are constantly increasing at a quite high pace, the players see that Croatian tourism has reached its limits within the current setup and is heading for structural changes. These concern the structure of guests, with the traditional guests from Germany, Austria, Italy and Croatia decreasing, and new guests from the UK, France, Russia and the Netherlands increasing.

Furthermore, the quality and portfolio of services is not adequate to justify the currently high prices. Service personal will have to improve their service orientation and friendliness and learn more languages. As one more key finding, we have seen, that cities and regions need to establish regions as destinations and mark them professionally according to their desired positioning.