December 20 – Providing accurate, helpful and up-to-date official Croatian tourism info should not be that hard in a country where tourism accounts for 20% of GDP, but this is the Kingdom of Accidental Tourism.
It took me quite a few years of living in Croatia until I figured it out. There was always something not quite right but I could never put my finger on it until an email exchange a few years ago withe the Croatian National Tourist Board.
I was being an annoying journalist again, coming up with some common-sense suggestion on something to improve tourism. The reply struck me by the way it was crafted.
According to Article 16 of the National Gazette decision XYZ123, this falls under the area of interest of the Ministry of Tourism, and we advise you to speak to them. Or words to that effect.
Something clicked and I finally understood what locals here know from birth. The system and the many officials who work in it are not here to serve the customer, but to make sure that their asses are covered and they are disturbed as little as possible.
Once I had grasped this, a lot of things fell into place, and I understood Croatia a lot better. It was why, for example, the national tourist board’s coronovirus information page until early May consisted of a cut and paste of the National Gazette official decision, with its dry legal jargon. Hardly the engaging and relevant answers to tourist questions such as when will flights start or can I go to the beach, but had the topic of corona info been covered? Tick.
The national tourist board was ahead of the Ministry of Tourism back in May, however, at least they had a coronavirus page. Yes, true story, even though the country had been locked down for weeks and tourists were desperately looking for accurate travel information for their summer holidays, there was not a word about the virus on the Ministry of Tourism’s English-language pages.
Indeed, life in the parallel universe of the Kingdom of Accidental Tourism was rather pleasant as a global pandemic rages elsewhere. This is how it looked in early May.
This all changed very quickly about May 10, after Index.hr very kindly covered my article Does Croatia Actually Want Tourists? How the Competition is Updating Visitors. In addition to pointing out the above, I also wondered why the Ministry of Tourism was using a fax number but no email in its contact details on its homepage.
Index is a much bigger medium than TCN and within an hour of publication, the fax machine had been abolished from the ministry. By the end of the day, there was even a coronavirus section on the ministry website, and national tourism board had upgraded from a National Gazette cut and paste to the semblance of a useful page of advice.
My job was done.
Or so I thought…
We are now months later into the pandemic, and I decided to check the current state of the info. It was back to the customer service discussion again. Are officials in an industry that is 20% of the GDP trying to attract customers more interested in working hard to help those tourists, or merely doing the minimum to get a box ticked so that they could be left alone?
I clicked on the shiny coronavirus banner on the ministry homepage to be greeted by a number of links. Not exactly the most user-friendly experience, but at least there was some information. If only it was up to date. The last updated link was July 10 on crossing the border. There have been several since then, the most significant regarding tourists on November 30 removing tourism as a means of entry for non-EU/EEA/UK, and the introduction of inter-county restrictions on December 18. No mention of either.
The link at the top of the page takes the user to an external website (again, hardly a welcoming experience), where the information is better.
But also not up to date.
The Koronavirus website has been outstanding (an initiative of the Ministry of Health, if I am not mistaken), and there has even been a limited English section. Sadly, presumably due to resources, this is not updated very often, and there is no mention of the latest December 18 measures. If the mindset at the Ministry of Tourism is on helping the tourist, perhaps we would be doing a better job. If the mindset is ticking a box, it is not their fault that the chaps at Koronavirus have not updated their page.
Over at the Croatian National Tourist Board, things are slightly different.
Growing up, I was always taught to serve a guest before myself, something which is also standard practice in Croatian hospitality. So the first surprise on checking the updated tourist board travel advice is that it caters first to the needs of Croatian citizens in its English-language version, with foreigners having to wait several paragraphs for the chance to find information relevant to them.
To give credit to the tourist board, they did have a sentence on the imminent inter-county restrictions. But it doesn’t take long until we come to that customer service mindset issue again. Put yourself in the mind of a potential visitor wanting to know if events are allowed. The official advice above, taking the reader not only to an external website, but also requiring the reader to understand Croatia to get an answer.
How hard is it? Especially when we have over 70 people working at the national tourist board, 20 regional tourist boards, 319 local tourist boards, a Ministry of Tourism, as well as those chaps in the tourism sector of the Chamber of Economy.
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