engleski

Rural tourism in Croatia: The Academic Community Concludes.

Rural tourism in Croatia does not enjoy the place and significance that it de-serves, be it in the institutional, strategic, developmental or academic sense. In the strategic sense, given the constant investment in tourism in the mari-time area, rural tourism in the maritime area developed in parallel with the maritime tourism, although at an unequal speed. However, its development was unreachable to the development of the rural area of Continental Croatia. Institutionally, rural tourism is neither strategically, legally nor statistically de-fined, nor defined in the sense of marketing and otherwise, which is, to say the least, unprofessional and developmentally improper. When it comes to the educational system, the matter of rural tourism is mostly structured – with an exception of only one institution of higher education (Virovitica College) – through optimal courses with lecture hours that are insufficient to deal in a grounded manner with only the theoretical basis which is fundamental for un- derstanding further matter topics. There are only a few enthusiastic scientists in the academic community of the Republic of Croatia who research and write on the topic of rural tourism, which is certainly not enough for its further devel-opment. Therefore, the authors of this paper have undertaken the challenge of using the appropriate scientific methods to show the real state of rural tourism in Croatia. The real scientific and professional challenge for the authors was to provide a cross-section of the most important results, of still (in 2020) the only research involving national tourism policymakers and co-creators and rural family farm owners.

rural tourism, agritourism, research, academic community

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