engleski

Potential of Croatia as an Attractive Tourist Destination for the Russian Market

Europe is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, in which tourism occupies a significant place among the most relevant economic activities, what refers as well to the Republic of Croatia. With this study, the authors intended to encourage and support the creation of an effective tourism policy in Croatia which would be based on the profiling of the certain target groups. Moreover, it was aimed that the results obtained from the customer analysis are compared to the market analysis of tourism industry in Croatia. The objective is to adapt the current tourist offer according to the identified needs and expectations of a particular tourist group, in order to increase the attractiveness of Croatia as a tourist destination and motivate the greater attendance of the targeted tourist groups. This particular research was oriented towards the Russian market as the target group. Therefore, the authors wanted to encourage a discussion on how to attract more Russian guests. Consequently, the intention of the research was a detailed analysis of the Russian tourists, in order to understand better their travelling motives and tendencies. In continuation, the attention was oriented towards the expectations of the Russian customer to compare them with the Croatian tourist offer, and to determine whether there is a possibility for an overlap. The method used to obtain the needed information was a survey conducted among the Russian citizens about their travelling habits. The research was made on the basis of 166 participants belonging to different age, gender, profession and income groups. The sampling and distribution of the survey occurred between May and July 2016. The results provided from the research indicate that Croatian tourism has a certain unrealized potential considering the popularization of Croatia as a tourist destination, and there is a capacity for increasing the revenues within the group of Russian tourists. That conclusion is based on the fact that Croatian tourist offer and the preferences of the Russian guests are compatible, i.e. they overlap in many aspects of the tourism industry. The results demonstrate that beautiful nature, cultural and historical heritage as well as the sun and the sea play the leading role in attracting more Russian tourists. Precisely those elements form the three pillars of the Croatian tourist offer. One the other hand, the profiling revealed that one of the most desirable destinations for the Russian guests are Italy and Spain, which both provide the same main tourist attractions as Croatia. Therefore, the focus of the strategic ideas given in the paper shifted to other tourism segments, such as type of accommodation, sales channels, travel motives, additional offer and seasonality, etc., in order to gain advantage in the Russian market, Mediterranean region and tourism in general.

Croatia, Russian market, target groups, tourism, tourist destination

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