Lonely Planet came out with their annual selection of best travel destinations earlier this week. Can you guess which Croatian tourist hotspot made the list?
As part of their Best in Travel 2018 feature, the renowned travel guide published four themed lists in total: Top 10 Countries, Top 10 Cities, Top 10 Regions, and Top 10 Best Value. Among the 40 items in total, some of the choices come as no surprise: Portugal and China, Seville and Oslo. Some are a bit more unexpected, such as Detroit or the Aeolian islands in Italy. Where Croatia is considered, which particular destination do you think made the cut?
None.
Not Dubrovnik, not Split, not Plitvice, not Istria. Even though the country is home to often overlooked destinations with a lot of potential but low tourist traffic, such as the Slavonia region, we didn’t even make the last cited list – ‘top destinations for frugal travelers’.
But you know what? That might not be such a bad thing.
This entire year, various destinations in Croatia have been featured on every ‘Top 10’ and ‘Best Destinations’ list imaginable. Take the coastal cities and the islands, for example. Multiple Adriatic gems made international headlines throughout the season – a season that broke every tourist record previously set in Croatia. To cite just a few examples, Dubrovnik’s Fresh Island Festival placed among the Guardian’s top 10 music festivals in 2017; the same media giant included the Dubrovnik circular on their list of the best new cycling holidays in Europe. The Telegraph featured a detailed guide to the Pearl of the Adriatic as well. Daily Mail was a bit late to the party, coming off as surprised to find out the city ‘has been restored to its former glory’ after suffering substantial damage in the Homeland War… 25 years ago. The list goes on and on: Vogue published a feature on Lošinj island, dubbing the Kvarner gem ‘idyllic’; Vis has been a media darling for the last month or so, owing to the crème de la crème of Hollywood that’s currently filming the sequel to Mamma Mia on the island. Hvar remains the overlord of the Croatian island empire – the media simultaneously swoons over its beauty and debates about the unfortunate party tourism business. Let’s not forget about the capital: Zagreb took away the best Christmas market title two years in a row, and preparations for this year’s Advent extravaganza are well underway.
All that mass media love for Croatia is more than welcome, but what about the other side of the coin? Owing to the public attention in general and the Game of Thrones frenzy, the Old Town in Dubrovnik has been bursting at the seams for quite some time now, coming to a point where we all started to wonder whether such an immense number of visitors is actually favourable for a certain destination – or the Croatian Adriatic as a whole. Sure, a successful season has quite a positive effect on the economy of a country reliant on tourism, but the rapid increase in traffic we’ve been witnessing also calls for well thought-out plans for future development. So far, we haven’t seen many of those, with the exception of Dubrovnik Mayor Mato Franković standing by his decision to decrease the number of cruise ships and visitors in the city, and Split Mayor Andro Krstulović Opara recently discussing the future of tourism in Split. Without the local authorities having a solid idea about where they’re headed and what they are able to do to support the tourism development, the entire industry might come crumbling down in near future, as the existing infrastructure won’t be able to keep up with the demand.
It might be time for the state to start supporting those regions that have a lot of potential, but only need a bit of help to thrive. Take Gorski kotar for example, home to some of the most gorgeous cycling routes and hiking trails you’ll ever come across in your life. Or Slavonia, a region with such an immense fund of cultural heritage, it’s incredulous that investments aren’t already rolling in; instead, the region is known for the unfortunate statistics, with Slavonians making up the largest percentage of the entire emigrating population.
All things considered, until we all start working together to put the overlooked parts of the country in the international spotlight, Croatia not getting featured on a popular list of best travel destinations makes for a well-deserved break.
