Dubrovnik has spent nearly a decade grappling with considered one of fashionable tourism’s greatest challenges: the way to stay a well-liked vacation spot with out being overwhelmed by its personal success, particularly at a time when its reputation exhibits no indicators of slowing down.
In the meantime, metropolis officers have shifted their focus from coping with overtourism in disaster mode to sustainable administration.
From the start of this 12 months till mid-July, the town has already welcomed round 650,000 arrivals and a couple of million in a single day company. The town can be proving in style as a home vacationer vacation spot, with vacationers from the UK, USA, France, Germany, Poland, Eire, Spain, Canada and Australia being one of many greatest markets thus far.
So the issue is not getting guests. As an alternative, metropolis leaders are targeted on making certain that tourism can develop sustainably whereas preserving heritage and sustaining the standard of life for native residents.
“It isn’t simply numbers that matter right here,” Dubrovnik Mayor Mato Frankovic informed Euronews Journey. “It’s additionally necessary how the movement of numbers is distributed over the day and week.”
In response to the mayor, the tourism trade as soon as grew with little coordination.
“For a few years, tourism in Dubrovnik was not managed and simply ‘occurred’ naturally,” he says.
“Beforehand, there have been days when 5 or 6 cruise ships would arrive without delay, bringing in lots of day trippers from close by locations. That is after we realized we wanted to handle tourism in a different way, so we divided tourism into completely different sectors.”
The Dubrovnik native has been within the function since 2017 and has targeted a lot of his tourism technique on the Respect the Metropolis (RtC) initiative. The initiative was first launched in the identical 12 months in response to the heavy burden on the UNESCO-listed Outdated City.
“Respect for Dubrovnik is what we demand from everybody: our residents, those that work within the metropolis and those that come to take pleasure in Dubrovnik. That is our message to everybody,” he mentioned.
Balancing reputation and preservation
All through the 2010s, the Outdated City, which sits as a dwelling stage of Dubrovnik’s historical past alongside the Dalmatian coast, bore the large brunt of the town’s rising reputation.
A rush of cruise arrivals, budget-friendly airline tickets, and the vacation spot’s world profile, boosted by the success of HBO’s Recreation of Thrones collection, led to extreme crowding in the summertime, leaving the Pearl of the Adriatic struggling to deal with peak customer numbers. “Subsequently, we might hardly stroll or roam round to benefit from the metropolis,” Frankovic informed Euronews Journey.
Dubrovnik’s mayor defined that tourism isn’t handled in an all-encompassing approach, however is managed throughout completely different sectors, comparable to cruise tourism, day-trippers, and in a single day stays.
As a part of the RtC initiative, solely two cruise ships can dock on the metropolis’s ports at a time, carrying as much as 4,000 passengers. Cruise port calls should final at the very least 8 hours.
Mr Frankovic defined that by encouraging longer port stops, passengers can be extra prone to unfold their travels across the metropolis and surrounding areas, somewhat than congregating within the historic middle.
“We discover that guests at the moment are selecting to discover extra excursions to different places,” he mentioned. “In fact, we nonetheless go to the outdated city, however now there isn’t any site visitors on the similar time, whereas earlier than there have been six cruise ships arriving and docking for simply 4 hours.”
Cruise tourism stays resilient, with greater than 661,000 cruise passengers anticipated to reach on 461 port calls by the top of 2026, in keeping with statistics from the Dubrovnik Port Authority.
Past cruise tourism, Dubrovnik’s RtC initiative additionally focuses on how day-trippers and in a single day company transfer across the metropolis.
Bus operators bringing vacationers from neighboring Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and the neighboring Croatian islands must e-book arrival slots earlier than getting into the town beneath the bus webshop system. The reservation system permits employees to stagger arrivals all through the day and regulate capability primarily based on occasion timing and fluctuations in arrival demand.
For long-term vacationers, the Dubrovnik Cross is each a gateway to tourism and a customer administration software. The cross permits you to enter the town’s museums and use public transport, in addition to recommending one of the best instances to go to Dubrovnik’s high sights.
“Since it’s digital, we will ship messages to guests about one of the best time to go to vacationer sights such because the Outdated City,” Frankovic mentioned.
“That is one thing we’re significantly engaged on fine-tuning to keep away from conditions the place a whole lot of individuals are strolling across the metropolis on the similar time. We wish individuals to decide on one of the best time to benefit from the metropolis with their households.”
Frankovich additionally mentioned the town is more and more counting on knowledge to form future insurance policies. Folks counters are put in within the outdated city to watch pedestrians. Tourism knowledge will then be shared and analyzed with the College of Dubrovnik to determine tendencies and suggest additional enhancements within the metropolis’s customer administration.
What’s subsequent for sustainable tourism?
Frankovic mentioned that regardless of Dubrovnik’s world enchantment, there are nonetheless corners of the town and its environment which can be neglected by vacationers. “Should you take Mount Surj for instance, there are nonetheless many areas that haven’t been found,” he mentioned.
Rising above Dubrovnik, this hill provides panoramic views of the Outdated City, the Adriatic Sea, and surrounding islands, and the AllTrails out of doors exercise information platform recommends hikers head out to look at the sundown close to the top of the day.
The mayor mentioned that somewhat than creating new sights, the town’s precedence is to enhance the general high quality of its choices whereas encouraging vacationers to discover what already exists.
It is usually the framework that may form future growth plans, and can see the town substitute undeveloped vacationer zones with sustainable inexpensive housing for locals and residents. Frankovic mentioned the problem extends past Croatia.
He argued that whereas different European cities have been additionally grappling with overtourism, the broader problem was to guard native communities from an inflow of extreme vacation houses.
“Quick-term leases are destroying cities, by regularly displacing residents and turning residential areas into vacationer house blocks,” he mentioned. “It’ll be the identical as the overall Disneyland expertise, and who would wish to go to a ghost city?
“That is not what the individuals need. They wish to see and see the residents. But when we depart issues like this, the individuals will probably be pushed out to the suburbs, distant from the large cities.”
“We hope that sooner or later we won’t have any extra issues the place native individuals have a tough time discovering an acceptable place to stay.In reality, there are lots of villages round us which can be at the moment deserted, however they’ve the potential to grow to be nice dwelling areas.”
For instance, the everlasting inhabitants of the outdated metropolis has fallen to only 1,500, in comparison with 5,000 in 1991.
Croatia’s strategy can be attracting curiosity in different components of the continent, and Frankovic mentioned European cities are beginning to study from one another’s experiences, and that his workplace is doing a variety of cooperation with its counterparts in different areas.
As for the town’s future, his ambition isn’t essentially for Dubrovnik to get larger, however for it to stay recognizable as such. He mentioned whereas the nation regarded ahead to creating a complete and dependable nationwide rail system, he hoped a lot of its enchantment would stay intact.
“My hope is that in 30 years somebody will come again and discover the identical Dubrovnik: the identical magnificence, preserved historic websites and crystal clear sea.”
