Mato Franković remains determined to make life better for both residents and tourists by tackling the eternal problem of cruise ships.
As DuList reports on the 14th of September, 2017, Mayor of the City of Dubrovnik Mato Frankovi and Deputy Mayor Jelka Tepšić held a meeting with numerous representatives of tourist agencies from the Dubrovnik area on the management of problematic cruise ship arrivals on round trips, as well as on the initiative and overall goal of reducing the number of simultaneous ship arrivals in order to relieve traffic and reduce the pressures of tourist traffic to protect the city’s UNESCO World Heritage core.
Mayor Mato Franković met with the representatives of tourist agencies and discussed the conclusions of last week’s meeting held in Hamburg, Germany, with the leaders of the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) and senior representatives of the world’s leading travel and travel companies.
He said the meeting had been held in a positive atmosphere, and that the leaders of the CLIA and the largest shipping companies fully understood the problems which Dubrovnik faced as a popular destination, expressing their readiness to actively participate in the process of change.
“Our goal is not to reduce the total number of guests arriving from cruise ships but to disperse their entry in order to ultimately achieve a higher level for Dubrovnik’s total tourist offer, we believe that with open communication and constructive co-operation with stakeholders in the cruise ship industry, we can achieve this,” said Mato Franković.
Representatives of the agencies have generally welcomed the initiative of planning the cruise ship arrival schedules more carefully and praised the short-term measures taken in cooperation with the City of Dubrovnik, the Tourist Board and the Port Authority of Dubrovnik, wise moves which have already shown positive shifts in traffic management during the peak season of this year. They also expressed their readiness to adapt their excursion programs so that excursions from other areas are planned on days when there are fewer cruise liners docked in Dubrovnik.
The negative issues caused by cruise ships in Dubrovnik are not new ones, and for the first time, there appears to be a light at the end of the tunnel.
