![]() The thing I have found, especially in Central Dalmatia, is that there is a new generation of local tourist board. Although I only had 2047 tourists last year (an impressive 6 tourists a day), not only do we not need any free help, we will unsubscribe. ![]() The pure cheek of it! What right did this fat Irishman have to send me an email regarding work when I am having a 4-20% salary reduction. Quite understandably, with such outrageous salary reductions, why open the email at all, asked 74%? Two weeks later, an impressive 26% of the 319 tourist board have found the time and interest to open the email.Īn impressive 26% found time in between their other duties in a pandemic with no tourists and no promotional activities to open the email. ![]() So what were the results? How many of these very busy local tourist boards - with no budget to feed their cousins and no tourists to disturb their day - engaged with this free offer with no benefits to them personally? I sent the offer above, knowing that these were difficult times and that I had no money to bribe them to accept my free offer. The Croatian National Tourist Board very kindly supplied me with the latest database of local tourist board, so that I knew that my free offer would reach the right addresses. Just send me the tools, and I will do the rest. I did a press release, which got a lot of traction in the Croatian media, offering a free article for any tourist board in Croatia which wanted to join our platform, Virtual Croatia. I didn't have the cash to feed all the cousins in these difficult times, but I could help out with (oh yes, the other thing) promoting tourism. That humanitarian streak has never left me. This coronavirus was devastating.īefore I moved to Croatia, I worked as a humanitarian aid worker in Somalia, Georgia, Rwanda and the edge of Siberia. Imagine these poor tourist boards, all 319 of them, with reduced salaries and no budgets to support their cousins' events or (oh yes, the other thing) promote tourism. There were no job losses of course - this was the public sector in Croatia - but a salary reduction? And no promo budget to give to the cousins? There were rumblings in the Mighty State of Uhljebistan. Outrageously, at a time when tens of thousands of workers in the private sector were losing their jobs, salaries were reduced by between 4-20% for workers in the 319 local tourist boards. So the days pass in the Mighty State of Uhljebistan. ![]() So hard in fact, that last week an organiser of a well-known national event told me that the tourist board he is working with for a postponed event asked if he could return the money invested until July because "we need it for the elections, but will return it immediately after." Times are hard in the Kingdom of Accidental Tourism. That works out (and no, we have not included the 20 regional boards or the Temple of Tourism, the National Tourist Board), at 1 tourist board for every 12,500 people in The Beautiful Croatia. So much so, in fact, that if there is a sign of life, we build a local tourist board and install a director. And (to use Minister Cappelli's interesting corona-era metaphor) "Croatia breathes tourism." We are a tourism country with a population of about 4 million people. We live in funny times, and nowhere is that more true than in Croatia. With tourism budgets frozen due to corona, how do Croatia's 319 tourist boards respond to free promotional help? The Virtual Croatia mailshot results are in.
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