Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Table 1
Main Promotional Activities Organized by Bemextours in Europe in 1992
Bemextours
Brochures
Travel Agents with
Presentation at 
Journalists Invited 
TV Crews Sent 
Bemex Clients
Tourists in 
Organization
Issued
Bemex Brochures
Fairs
to Croatia
to Croatia
in Croatia
Croatia
Austria
270,000
1,247
5
9
—
4,500
164,000
Belgium
100,000
834
5
3
—
0
6,000
France
120,000
1,580
3
2
—
375
16,000
Italy
250,000
1,770
4
15
4
1,185
239,000
Holland
300,000
1,900
4
7
2
0
12,000
Germany
450,000
3,900
10
38
2
2,842
148,000
Switzerland
90,000
730
5
12
—
0
7,000
TOTAL
1,580,000
11,961
36
86
8
8,902
1,270,855
Total cost of 
965,172
promotion in 
dollars
Source:
Internal company data and Statisticki godisnjak Hrvatske (Republic Bureau of Statistics).
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for all at the fairs, because other tour operators did not offer package holidays to
Croatia. But at the same time, some foreign tour operators started to consider
including Croatia in their programs, or to issue offprints. In this way, the distribu-
tion of the first Croatian brochure with package holidays and its presentation at all
major fairs in Europe gave a clear sign to other tour operators not to exclude the
whole of Croatia from their program. One of the aims of the brochure was also to
stimulate other tour operators to issue programs for the country. The line of think-
ing was simple and clear: if a national specialist, who knows the situation in the
country best, invests considerably in marketing a Croatian product, other tour oper-
ators should perhaps not be left behind (either for business or for competitive rea-
sons). Therefore, this particular operator played the role of catalyst in the market
and very much helped to “break the fear” of traveling to Croatia.
Although the crisis in Croatia has long passed, tourists from the main generat-
ing markets are returning only slowly. In 1998, Croatia achieved not more than
50% of the overnights spent by German tourists in 1990, about 68% of Italians
compared with 1990, less than 30% of Dutch tourists, and the situation with the
overnights of British holidaymakers has become marginal (9.1%). The reason
could be that during this long period of negative media coverage, tourists and tour
operators turned toward other destinations. Consequently, Croatia, which has
emerged from a war, has to create its tourism identity from scratch, and develop its
own image. But image has its time dimension and it changes slowly. It has to be
built, developed, consolidatedm and monitored (Gartner, 1996; Pirjevec, 1998).
Today Croatia depends heavily on foreign tour operators that control European
tourism flows. These can significantly help the country to return more quickly to
international markets. Although the largest European operators have returned to the
country, the accommodation capacities that they have taken are very small, and can
hardly be compared with the period before the war. To be able to comprehend this
situation completely, the ownership structure of the leading European tour operators
should also be analyzed and understood (Cavlek, 2000). As foreign investors have
still not found this destination worth investing in, Croatia has problems in position-
ing itself better on the international market. This statement can be supported by
comparing the development of tourism in Turkey, which, for example, registered
36,000 tourists from the United Kingdom in 1988 when Croatia at the same time
was visited by almost 400,000. Just 10 years later, the number of British tourists to
Turkey had risen to 1.6 million, and Croatia registered 56,000. Another example is
the engagement of the leader TUI on the Croatian market. In 1987, it had 124,000
clients in Croatia and the numbers for Turkey were marginal. In 1996 TUI had
17,800 clients in Croatia and almost ten times more in Turkey (172,000). But, as
already noted, TUI and some other major European tour operators, or their parent
companies, are financially engaged in Turkey, but none of them is in Croatia.