Although many, even some critics of the existing CNTB, believe that there should be one such system that will deal with the promotion of Croatian tourism in the world, the existing method of financing is problematic, and no less problematic is that the money raised is spent on lawsuits against its critics.
The Croatian National Tourist Board, which lives off one of the more bizarre parafiscal levies, has sued Paul Bradbury, founder of Total Croatia News, for criticizing their work. Bradbury has been writing about Croatian tourism for years and is quite critical of the CNTB’s work.
Like other state organizations and institutions, the CNTB does not submit criticism, although it is financed with taxpayers’ money, so they are asking Bradbury for a total of HRK 100,000 through two lawsuits.
One lawsuit refers to statements he made to the Index.hr portal in which he criticized the CNTB for insufficiently following what is written about Croatia in foreign media and for not reacting to incorrect information. The second lawsuit refers to Bradbury’s cover photo on Facebook, which read “Croatia full of uhljebs”, in which the team from the CNTB obviously recognized themselves, although he did not mention them anywhere. But that was enough to cause them mental pain.
If the CNTB starts suing all those who are dissatisfied with their work, the courts will soon be overwhelmed with tens of thousands of lawsuits. Namely, most of those who pay membership fees to the CNTB, which are practically all companies registered in Croatia, except for a few industries, are not only dissatisfied with their work, but it is not clear to them why they have to pay them, because they have nothing to do with tourism.
Membership fees range from a few hundred kunas a year, when it comes to micro-entrepreneurs, to tens of thousands of kunas for larger companies, which often turns out to be the amount of the annual net salary of one worker. The membership fee is paid according to income, not according to profit, so there are situations where tens of thousands of kunas in membership fees are paid by companies that are in losses.
And of course, for a company to pay a membership fee, it does not have to have anything to do with tourism. There is an example of the wood industry, which really has nothing to do with tourism, and which pays about 60 thousand kunas in tourist membership fees.
The CNTB system consists of over 300 local tourist boards – one in almost every village. Then there is the CNTB at the state level and nearly 20 other offices around the world, from China, South Korea all the way to Los Angeles in the US. There is no system for measuring their results, or the public does not know about them, so we do not know how many tourists were brought by the CNTB office in Los Angeles, what they actually do, and what their results are.
Although many, even some critics of the existing CNTB, believe that there should be one such system that will deal with the promotion of Croatian tourism in the world, the existing method of financing is problematic, and no less problematic is that the money raised is spent on lawsuits against its critics.
The Index article in question is still online – you can read it here.
