Croatian magic

How do you market your tourist destination to target groups from different cultures? Do you stress facts or atmosphere? What convinces customers most and how do you persuade them to spend a few weeks of their precious time at your destination?

I spent last week on one of four boats travelling down the coast of Croatia together with 100 students and staff from universities in the USA, Canada, Finland, Slovenia, Germany and Croatia exploring this fascinating topic. We were all taking part in ITHAS, the International Tourism and Hospitality Academy at Sea, a remarkable programme for students of tourism from across the world.

During visits to places such as Trogir, Split, Vis, Korcula and Brac, it soon became clear that many of the representatives of tourism that we met relied heavily on emotional personal stories and the ‘"magic of Croatia". Amongst the numerous giveaways that we were presented with was a Croatian heart.

A great selling point? Photo: Robert Gibson

I enjoyed my informal workshops with students on the deck of our boat exchanging and reflecting on our own "cultural moments" and their implications for the marketing of small-scale tourism in a region still working hard to re-establish itself after the tragic events of the late 20th century. I hope that our findings will be passed on to the Croatian tourist authorities who did so much to welcome us so warmly in many different places with talks, tours and receptions.

I especially enjoyed the traditional a cappella singing known as Klapa and was surprised to see my Gen Y students singing along while at the same time checking modern-day Facebook. I also learnt about rivalries between the places that we visited and found out that the port of Trogir, having heard that restaurants in nearby Split were offering "Banana Split", came up with the idea of "Banana Trogir". Later on in the year, I very much hope to include the students’ more serious research findings into a planned article on culture and customers in the intercultural communication section of Business Spotlight.