Croatia can become/remain a tourism star

Croatia can and must live better from its tourism and can utilise this sector to better market its products and it can become/remain an EU or world tourism star if it designs a future in tourism, amends and improves its legislation, increases investments which means enhancing its competitiveness and to more effectively communicate this on the market, said Croatian Tourism Minister Veljko Ostojic at a forum

"How Croatia can become/remain a tourism star in the EU?", at VERN, a Croatian private university.

Stressing that amplifying competitiveness was one of the key tasks for Croatian tourism, Ostojic believes that the reduced Value Added Tax (VAT) to be introduced next year will be of great benefit.

The tourist board will be restructured toward destination management aimed at creating a new quality tourist product that will motivate arrivals to Croatia throughout the entire year.

Development cannot be achieved without strategy and by the year's end we will have prepared a tourism strategy to cover the period until 2020, the minister said, adding that investments are required
too and next year investments could equal around 2.5 - 3 billion kuna, against this year's 1.5 billion.

Loan programmes offered by the Croatian Bank of Reconstruction and Development (HBOR) will contribute in this aspect as will the privatisation of remaining state-owned tourist companies.

Minister Ostojic said that a growth of 5 percent in tourism put Croatia in top place this year in the Mediterranean but also boosted the GDP by brining in 7 billion euros from foreign tourists and around
800 million from local tourists.

Vern lecturers stressed the importance of including multi-disciplinary experts in creating new tourist products particularly theme tourism which is economically more feasible than mass tourism. (Hina)