Keywords

Introduction 1

The relationship between tourism development and spatial planning is especially complex (Chettiparamb & Thomas, 2012). This is due to the corollary of economic, social, cultural, ecological and political relationships between innumerable stakeholders. Against this complexity, it is open for discussion as to what extent are policy planners, especially at the national level, engaged in critical analysis and assessment of the synergy that exists between spatial planning policies and that of tourism development and their influence on the existing and planned tourism zones.

On the Adriatic’s east coast, there are some twenty abandoned tourism zones or resorts, most with hotel complexes within them. These zones are located in some of the most picturesque locations, they are well planned and have all the necessary infrastructure, and some had enjoyed century-old tourism activities. It is important to note at the outset that the land of most of these zones remains in state ownership, while the buildings, such as hotels, might be in private ownership or it might be owned by the local municipalities.

The reason for the abandonment of these tourism zones can be viewed from a number of perspectives. However, in this study the focus was on the government’s policies on spatial planning and tourism development. These tourism zones were abandoned some 25 years ago, during the Homeland war (1991–1995), and as a result of the subsequent socio-political changes. The new social and political organisation of the country required new legislation which brought about changes in policies in all sectors of governance, including urban and regional spatial planning and tourism development. Thus, the analysis about these abandoned tourism resorts offers an opportunity to investigate the congruence between tourism development and spatial planning policies and its impact on tourism development.

This close relationship between tourism and spatial planning policies was evaluated by analysing two very famous but abandoned tourism resorts: the Haludovo, on the island of Krk in the northern part of Adriatic, an area which was not directly affected by the war, and Kupari resort near Dubrovnik in the south part of the Adriatic, which was damaged by war during 1991–1995 period.

The research was based on the inductive and deductive methods used to analyse tourism and spatial planning policies, the time-slice analysis of tourism development. Although the term policy can be used for all levels of government such as local, regional and national, in this study the term “policy” refers to the policy of the government at the national level. Finally, comparative analysis was used in the case of the two tourism resorts analysed in this study. Of course, this study seeks to contribute to better understanding how important it is to create common tourism and spatial planning policies.

In order to provide a better understanding of the processes behind the development of these tourist zones, and their ensuing abandonment, it is prudent to highlight first the spatial planning as it was under the former Yugoslav socialist government (1945–1990, and the government of the former Socialist Republic of Croatia), when tourist areas all along the Adriatic coast from Savudrija up north to Prevlaka in the south experienced a rapid development and growth in the years between 1960 and 1980. And, second, it is equally important to analyse the demise of these tourist resorts after 1990 and their final abandonment.

The centrally planned tourism development has a long tradition. After the Second World War, most economies of the former socialist bloc countries adopted the practice of centrally planned tourism development, including Yugoslavia, in line with its centrally planned economy model. Coincidently, this type of planning approach to tourism was also evident in countries with a capitalist social system (Beyer, Hagemann & Zinganel, 2013; Breheny, 1991; Buckley & Witt, 1990; Julien, 1989). The importance of tourism planning at the national level was seen as a necessary part of the central policy planning apparatus per se, or the five-year plan, but also to meet the needs of future tourism growth and, therefore, to ensure its development and to develop the most poorest regions of Dalmatia. The benefits of tourism development planning at national level did pay dividends especially for facilitating polycentric development, rational spatial distribution for tourism development and, more broadly, a balanced and centrally controlled use of land and economic development of the poorer regions.

While such plans serve to ensure a controlled and coordinated spatial and tourism development in a desired direction, their implementation depends on a variety of mechanisms, which is often fraught with challenges. Among these is the issue of legislative framework and its implementation, together with the institutional coordination, which are particularly challenging (Pastras & Bramwell, 2013), because spatial planning, the use of building land, infrastructure and tourism development have to be simultaneously assessed, coordinated and implemented.

Spatial Planning and Tourism Development in Croatia During 1945–1990

Favourable spatial and geographic and natural conditions on the Adriatic coast sparked the development of tourism resorts before and after the Second World War. It is well known that by the 1930s, tourism and tourism infrastructure on the eastern seaboard and on some of the Adriatic islands, like Lošinj, Brijuni and Hvar, was well established, featuring world-class accommodation and touristic facilities. In the years immediately following the WWII, the new communist state of Yugoslavia appropriated all of the tourism resorts, and tourism was quickly revitalised by the early 1950s as part of the state-run programme for the “vacationing proletariat”; if you were a steel, or mining, or office worker, or any state-employed worker, then you were entitled for an annual holiday at one of these resorts at nominal cost. This kind of tourism soon began to take on unexpected proportions, as reflected in the spontaneous but sharp increase in commercial accommodation facilities, strong growth in the number of domestic and regional tourist arrivals from other eastern bloc countries and growth in domestic tourism investments. Tourism was spreading not only in parts of the Adriatic coastal areas that were planned for tourism development, but it started to develop organically, spreading to the coastal hinterland. Consequently, many places that witnessed an increase in tourism demand lacked operational know-how and quality of marketing, organisational and administrative skills to manage this growth.

It is not surprising, therefore, that due to the hasty and poorly planned tourism development, the tourism industry at the time has shown first signs of disorganisation and a lack of coordination with other sectors of economy with which it was both directly and indirectly connected. As a result, water shortages, poor roads, mismatched passenger-transport scheduling, inadequate communications, traffic congestions in towns and villages and interruptions in supply of electricity were daily realities during the high summer season. In addition, the early hotel construction lacked spatial, functional and technical qualities due to the prevailing building practices that had no spatial plans or the preparation of sites where the building was situated.

Faced with the consequence of such uncontrolled and uncoordinated tourism development, the awareness of the need to plan tourism development on the national, regional and local level emerged, especially after the national Economic Development Plans 1957–1961 (the national five-yearly economic plan) further stimulated tourism development as the major economic goal. In spite of this, the Plan failed to address the complex and multi-layered issues of tourism-related infrastructure, and it had not provided details about the quality and locations of accommodation resorts; the goal was just to build, leaving the rest of the issues “as we go along” (Kobašić, 1981, 1987).

After the official endorsement of tourism as an important economic activity in the national five-yearly economic plan, two types of actions were evident. One set of activities were directed towards regional spatial and tourism planning, while the other set towards collecting relevant data as being the key input to national spatial and tourism development planning. In terms of the latter, it was realised that the entire Adriatic area needed a spatial plan which focused on tourism development. The former Agency for Tourism Economics (today the Institute for Tourism) in 1963 collected key tourism data from coastal areas and tourism development and had drafted several key documents about tourism market demand and the spatial distribution of tourism activities. These documents served as a pretext to national policy for the regionalisation of the Adriatic. In terms of regional planning, it was the spatial planners in Croatia who pioneered spatial for tourism (Marinović-Uzelac, 1986). The first one to be completed was for the Makarska Riviera, a 57 km stretch of pebble beaches in mid-south Dalmatia in 1960 (Kranjčević, 2012a), followed a year later by the tourism spatial plan for the Šibenik region, which is blessed with one of the most beautiful archipelagos in the Adriatic and which was subsequently zoned as a protected national park.

By 1963 the stage was set for the collective drafting of a long-term spatial plan for the Adriatic. This could have only been achieved as a result of the background analyses on tourism growth; natural, geographic, demographic and economic conditions; an understating of tourism and its influence on and dependency on other sectors; activities of the economy; and the experience gained in the process of regional tourism development plans. Although it might have been an overambitious goal, it enabled, for the first time, the collection of documentation on the coastal area, including tourism, based on an analysis of natural, geographic, demographic, economic and infrastructure conditions which served as the basis for policy development for tourism and its spatial distribution. What is important to note here is that the formulation of the policy for spatial planning and tourism development was linked with other sectors of the economy, for example, other socio-economic policies.

Funded by the United Nations Development Programme, the 1963 spatial plan was followed by the spatial plan for the Southern Adriatic in 1964–1968 covering the coastal and hinterland area of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro. It was planned that the number of tourists would increase from 116,000 in 1964 to 900,000 by 1990, of which 820,000 would be holidaying at the coast. It was calculated at the time that to accommodate that number of visitors, there existed a need to have 600,000 beds by 1990.

Two years later a similar plan was launched for the remaining north part of the Adriatic, under the official title—the Coordinated Spatial Plan of the Upper Adriatic Region—covering the coastal territory of Slovenia and the upper or northern part of Croatia. It was developed using the same methodology as that for the Southern Adriatic and it was completed in 1972. For that part of the Adriatic, an increase in bed capacity was planned, from 313,7 thousand in 1961 to 1,3 million beds by 2000 (Kranjčević, 2012a, 2012b; Marinović-Uzelac, 1986).

The goal of regional plans for the maritime area of the eastern Adriatic coast, from the late 1960s and early 1970s, was to synchronise tourism, industry, agriculture, culture and environmental protection sectors’ policies with the aim to put a stop to the expansionistic, aggressive and destructive forms of tourism such as the occupation of the most attractive areas and construction of an ever-increasing number of hotels and B&Bs, camps and similar. In addition, they aimed at fostering a polycentric development or, in other terms, a rational use and management of land. In addition to spatial distribution of tourism, these regional plans also served as the foundation for the planned urbanisation of the Adriatic coast (Institute for Urbanism, 1967, 1968, 1972).

The planned urbanisation of the coast was directed by the then central government, and as alluded to earlier, this was due to the fact that tourism-designated land was entirely in the state ownership. Hence, there existed a politically expedient mechanism for the plans’ unquestioned implementation, and as a result, a large number of hotels and hotel complexes were built according to these regional spatial plans, resulting in a concentration of state-run tourism resorts in Istria, that included Plava Laguna (250 ha; 12,500 beds) and Zelena Laguna in Poreč (130 ha; 13,500 beds); in the northern Adriatic with two smaller zones—Haludovo in Malinska (25 ha; 1,800 beds) and Uvala Scott and Uvala Scott II near Kraljevica (18 ha; 1,200 beds); two in the central Adriatic, Solaris in Šibenik (43 ha; 5,108 beds) and Borik in Zadar (30 ha; 1,700 beds); and in south Adriatic, near Dubrovnik is Babin Kuk (79 ha; 4,400 beds) (Ministry of Tourism, 2012). In addition to these, the state had also built hotels and resorts that were exclusively used by the military personal with restricted public access, such as Duilovo near Split, Kupari near Dubrovnik and Baška Voda near Makarska. In addition to those that have been built, there were ready plans for the additional development of many more tourism resorts. Ironically, many of these state-planned resorts and potential areas for tourism development from the 1970s and 1980s have found their way in the current zoning plans, despite several changes in spatial planning and tourism development legislation (Ministry of Construction and Physical Planning, 2012). Clearly, it can be inferred that the then state had planned for mass tourism on a grand scale.

The development of the tourism zones was governed by the socio-political ideology and socio-political-economic circumstances of the time. Ideologically, it was important to show to the outside world the achievements of the country while caring for its people, the “vacationing proletariat”, while the nationalisation of the land and public ownership, meant that the cost-effectiveness or these touristic projects, was not of the uppermost concern to the bureaucrats and policy makers. Critically, however, in the total absence of public and political scrutiny for transparency and cost-effectiveness, the bureaucrats, policy planners and regulatory architects had a complete carte blanche for realising their grand ideas (Sallnow, 1985a, 1985b).

Hotels and resorts of the time were predominantly planned and constructed in modern architectural style with a two-fold purpose, one, for showing the world the bright side of socialism and, two, to show the “utopic” conditions that were created for the workers (Kulić, 2009). Hotel designs were based on principles of modern architecture, especially in terms of proportions between built surfaces and surrounding areas, where sport, entertainment and cultural facilities were built and blended into the landscape. These resorts were planned with an idea that they had to be accessible to all society members, regardless of their social position or class. Against this background it comes as no surprise when this slogan first appeared in 1956, “Yugoslavia is a country of socialism, natural beauty and tourism” (FNRJ, 1966). Although this “utopian” idea lingered on for a while, but even in a socialist system just like in Orwel’s “Animal Farm”, not all resorts were readily available to all the “proletariat”, and in any case, as the time rolled on, the state became more interested in earning foreign exchange from non-domestic visitors, while the idea of the “vacationing proletariat” was quietly consigned to history.

On the downside, these enormous tourism resorts with their equally capacious hotels and other touristic facilities created undesirable impacts too. The most notable, which the bureaucrats, policy planners and spatial planners had failed to “plan” for, was that many of these tourist resorts were giant in size, often dwarfing neighbouring towns or villages, where the number of tourists by far outstripped the number of local residents. The capacity and land area of these large tourism resorts was in vast disproportion to the small Mediterranean settlements, causing dislocated relationships between locals and visitors, to say the least: “Build them big” was also another socialist penchant, among many. For example, the Haludovo tourism resort (to be discussed later) is about 2.5 times larger in land area from the adjoining municipality of Malinska (the municipality of Malinska-Dubašnica has 3081 inhabitants and the settlement itself has 971, according to 2013 census). While Grandtis and Taylor (2010) erroneously point out that tourism has brought jobs and slowed down the depopulation of coastal areas and islands, if only temporarily, on the other hand, however, large-scale planned urbanisation of the maritime land, such as the Haludovo tourism resort, had irreversibly transformed the existing spatial, aesthetic, cultural, socio-economic and ecological conditions forever, and not necessarily for the better: So much for the “socialism” and “natural beauty” in the “Yugoslavia is a country of socialism, natural beauty and tourism”!

This transformation and large-scale planned urbanisation of the maritime land could have been much more impacting had all the early tourism plans been fully realised. According to the early tourism development plans, by year 2000 it was estimated to have 1.9 million beds in the coastal area of the former Yugoslavia. A glimpse at the aggregate data on bed capacities and overnights in Table 9.1 shows that these early estimates were way overambitious because in 1984 in the entire Yugoslavia there were 1,2 million beds of which 800,000 were in Croatia: “Big numbers” was also another socialist penchant.

Table 9.1 Number of beds in the hospitality industry in the period 1955–1984
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Nevertheless, the national and regional “build them big” culture by the bureaucrats, planners and other public sector minions at municipal and local levels was well and truly alive right up to the 1990s, where a number of plans were drafted to further increase tourism activities, in particular accommodation capacities in public or state-run ownership. Thus, for example, the Tourism Development Study conducted in 1984, proposed another “build them big” project, a 100 per cent increase in accommodation facilities over the next 16 years (Table 9.2). Albeit without a scintilla of information about the spatial needs and distribution for these facilities (Kobašić, 1987).

Table 9.2 Planned accommodation facilities in Yugoslavia for 2000 according to a study from 1984
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To conclude, in a country with a relatively normal and stable social and political system, spatial planning and tourism development poses considerable challenges. One can hazard to think what a perilous task this must be in societies undergoing fundamental socio-political changes, and a transition from a centrally planned economy to the free market economy, as witnessed in the former socialist-government countries such as Yugoslavia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Rumania and Albania. These transitions have aimed to radically reform the known system, or old order, of making legislation and the administration of legislation. No doubt, the transition from socialism and centrally planned economy required massive and long-term changes in legislation, which, incidentally, are still ongoing today, in particular, for land ownership, agriculture, taxation and spatial reforms.

However, the greatest challenge to date is in the administration and the inconsistent, and unequal implementation of the new policies. The administration of the new legislation at national, regional and local levels is painfully mired by the inertia of the administrative and bureaucratic culture, the people in the office, bureaucrat-led public sector mentality struggling to come to terms and understand the “new order”. It must also be said that part of the problem lies in that since the fall of centrally planned economy, spatial and tourism development policies, like many other policies, have been authorised and promulgated often in complete isolation to other socio-economic policies that might have an impact on tourism, which cause dislocation or policy-clash at some later stage of tourism development. To date, internal bureaucratic and administrative policy hurdles still prevail.

Attitudes Towards Private or Non-state Tourism Enterprises and Initiatives

Immediately after the WWII, the small private sector-operated tourism industry in the former Yugoslavia was almost entirely eliminated mainly due to the war, loss of infrastructure and the nationalisation (confiscation) of land and property. The privately run tourism industry started to develop slowly at first, during the mid-1960s and early 1970s (Kobašić, 1987). While foreign and domestic experts focused on the rapid development of mass tourism in the socialist Yugoslavia, no one was very concerned about the lack of private sector initiative or, later on, about the quality of tourism products offered by the private sector (Allcock, 1986; Sallnow, 1985a, 1985b; Weber, 1989).

The official position and attitude to private sector initiatives were until the mid-1970s restrictive and dogmatic. This position changed fairly quickly with policy changes after the adoption of the 1974 Constitution. Critically, the new constitution allowed for a much needed political power-shift which basically allowed for the decentralised planning of the economy, thus shifting socio-economic planning, including spatial planning and tourism development among others, from the central level to republic level. Significantly in terms of tourism development among other things, the introduction of new constitution granted considerable sovereignties to private ownership and entrepreneurship, a model which the PRC adopted for the transformation of its planned economy in the 1980s, with some success!

Consequently, the official position and attitudes to private sector tourism investment changed with equally corresponding official position, that both public and private investments were important for developing diverse quality and quantity of tourism products and services. In particular, as the tourism market started to change and the large-scale hotel and resort state-run companies began to face serious financial difficulties in not being able to swiftly adapt to rapid market changes in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the advantages of small-scale private investment which was easier to finance, organise and manage made a lot of sense, and it became only too obvious even for the die-hard bureaucrats, that this was the new future of tourism development.

Nonetheless, the tensions between the public and private sectors remained, mostly due to the ideological obstacles manifest in draconian administrative and regulatory barriers for private investors. Faced with unclear regulations and unstable, unpredictable and ambiguous taxation policies, the private sector had not made the necessary investments in tourism development. Not surprisingly, taking commercial risks in such uncertain circumstances forced private investors to think short term and maximise immediate gains, often resorting to fraudulent business practices such as concealment of income, failure to register all tourists staying at an establishment, non-compliance with regulatory requirements, offering low quality of service and similar practices. Given the daft notion that the private sector could not possibly pose a threat to large state-owned hotels, the bureaucrats toyed with a policy idea that would limit the number of beds held by any one privateer to forty (Montana, 1986); although these ideas never materialised, they did stall crucial private investment in tourism development.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, or in the late period of Yugoslav socialism, another policy shift allowed privateers to build small, holiday homes but, once again, in absence of spatial planning and architectural guidelines. Needless to say, as a consequence, in some places complete ad hoc holiday home complexes emerged that were used mostly by their owners and their family and friends. As the demand for beds in the mid-1980s outstripped supply, many of these houses or rooms were rented to tourists. Even so, this spare bed capacity fell short to effectively make a contribution to the development of competitive tourism. As time went on towards the late 1980s, the grinding transition to a market economy aggravated by the lack of clear vision for the private sector initiatives in the tourism industry caused the emergence of unregulated or, as was then referred to, “wild” tourism which, as a matter of reference, was evident in other eastern socialist countries (Bachvarov, 1997; Hall, 1992, 1998).

Both public and private tourism development, and tourism per se, come to an abrupt halt in 1990 with the escalation of hostilities and finally war. Inconceivably, the notion that nobody in former Yugoslavia could have predicted that the public sector development of tourism would be seriously dislocated by the change in the socio-political system, and the war, is plainly a fallacy. Quite a few leading tourism authorities in the EU and elsewhere made an obviously correct prediction that as in any area where there is war on the Croatian territory had seriously scuttled any future plans for tourism development and investment. And, it had put an end to the existing tourism industry (Hall, 1992, 1998); what fool would travel to a war zone for holidays!

Spatial Planning and Tourism Development in Croatia from 1990 to Today

In the very first years of Croatian independence, with the fall of socialist order and planned economy system, the end Homeland war, introduction of new legislation in all socio-economic sectors, the commencement of transition to a market economy and the impact of globalisation caused terrific challenges in the functioning of the new state’s administrative apparatus at all levels, and rapid legislative changes led to a number of mutually inconsistent rights and obligations. The existing administrative apparatus, mired by inertia and old bureaucratic culture, was unable to adapt quickly to new conditions, and predictably, it used its bureaucratic power to “deal” with the new situation (Simon, 1976), which was to do nothing, a bureaucratic legacy from the early days of Communist Yugoslavia.

The key land-reform legislative changes brought a profound difference in land ownership. After nearly 50 years of state ownership, the new constitution and the subsequent legislation decreed private ownership of land to be the citizens’ absolute right. While, on the other hand, the country, as a whole, faced hefty issues such as land reparations for the formerly confiscated land, rebuilding, economic growth and recognition within the international community. As a consequence, both private and public property ownership was now seen as a valuable investment rather than a cheap area or site for appropriation or for collective use (Bramwel & Meyer, 2007).

By 1991 the planning for the new economy commenced in earnest which included a new Tourism Development Strategy: Put very simply, it was imperative for the new government to kick-start tourism-sourced foreign income to be able to finance the running of the government. Importantly, the new tourism development strategy clearly instituted spatial resources as being the backbone of long-term tourism planning and development. Importantly, the new strategy directed now the new policy should define spatial within the tourism industry. Likewise, the National Strategy for Spatial Planning (Ministry of Physical Planning, Construction and Housing 1997) also singled out valuable land space as a key strategic resource for the nation’s tourism development. Incredibly, these strategic recommendations for spatial planning and tourism zoning were mostly ignored by the bureaucrats and the political party in power at the time. Absurdly, the promulgation of the directive about the importance of spatial for tourism was carried over (cut-and-pasted) in all strategic documents including the current Croatian Tourism Development Strategy to 2020 (Ministry of Tourism, 2013), although the current Strategy is not specific about the spatial distribution of tourism, which, yet again, has a whiff that the Strategy is being less than embraced.

In the first years of independence, the majority of the ex-state-owned hotel and tourist resort companies were sold-off and privatised where the private company often owned all of the accommodation operations such as hotels and touristic services at a destination. These privatisation transactions were often done in a non-transparent way, and sadly, without resolving the now thorny issue of land ownership (new legislation about land ownership). Arising from the old bureaucratic need to “control” in spite of the new legislation, new owners were able to purchase buildings but without the surrounding land area, which hampered the renovation processes. But, it has to be said, this situation did not worry some new owners because they were in it just to make a quick profit in re-selling the buildings to someone else. As new legislation became more effective mainly brought about by public pressure for transparency and to put an end to corruption in the privatisation process, not all ex-state-run tourism enterprises were to be privatised, and by 2013, fourteen tourism companies, that are in the state ownership, are still waiting to be privatised (Ministry of Tourism, 2013).

Relatively free from the regulatory constraints imposed by the government, private investment in tourism started to flourish in the early 2000. The share of privately owned commercial accommodation facilities, popularly called “zimmer frei” (owning to the large number of tourists from Germany), increased by more than 50 per cent over the last 20 years. However, this expansion was not regulated by the appropriate spatial plans where development did not follow the pace of investment. In the absence of spatial plans that would ensure proper land use zoning and quality of municipal infrastructure, the rapid construction of accommodation facilities by private investors was ad hoc and disorganised. Thus, in many cases, once such accommodation facilities had been constructed, there would inevitably be shortages of drinking water, or problems with electricity and sewage discharge, sporadic collection of rubbish and traffic issues such as narrow roads, lack of sidewalks and lack of parking spaces. These problems combined had a direct adverse impact on real estate prices.

The reasons for such a rapid construction of private accommodation facilities should be sought not only in the owners’ interpretation of what private property is, where many considered that the owner has the absolute right (to do anything) without any obligations, but also within the overall economic restructuring process where many ex-state-run companies found it impossible to adapt to the market economy, as a consequence of which a large number of people lost their source of income and, in the coastal areas, they turned to provision of tourist accommodation as an alternative. In addition, tourism, with the related demand for new building construction, was also seen as a lucrative business by the local and regional governments along the coast, for which the building licence fees and taxes are a major source of income.

Thus, due largely in part to tourism development, quite a few areas on the coast had become huge building sites with all manner of ad hoc construction for accommodation, restaurants, sporting halls, residential buildings, as well as public infrastructure. In short, tourism development has transformed many coastal places beyond recognition. While precise data on spatial areas dedicated to tourism development is not available, the increase of the built-up areas along the coast can serve as firm proxy indicator of the changes in land use. Since there is no accurate data on the built-up area along the coast, that is, from the time of more intensive development of tourism after WWII, it is useful to compare data from the mid-1960s to the present day.

According to the National Report of Situation (State) of Spatial Development (Ministry of Construction and Physical Planning, 2012), there were 2446 settlements in the coastal areas of the Adriatic with 1.4 million inhabitants or 33 per cent of the total population of Croatia. In comparison, in 1961, there were 1.3 million inhabitants or 31 per cent the total population. In which case, there does not appear to be a significant change in the number of people that lived along the coast. However, state-sanitised statistics have conveniently failed to take into account that in the period from 1953 to 1966, some 300,000 to 5000,000 inhabitants either escaped or left the coast and islands for overseas, which would put the 1961 inhabitant figure somewhere in the region of 700,000 to 900,000. Nonetheless, in terms of actual land use, the change was astonishing. Presently, coastal cities, villages and other urbanised areas occupy approximately 1033 km or about 16.5 per cent of the total coastline length (6278 km). In comparison, in 1960, just before the intensive tourism development, built-up areas occupied 120–150 km of coastline.

After the Homeland war, there were significant changes in the structure of commercial accommodation. For example, the proportion of beds in hotels decreased due to the number of hotel resorts that have not been rebuilt or refurbished after 1995. These were mostly state owned. The other reason for the decrease in beds is that the decrease was positively correlated to the status quo in quality of the existing state-run hotels, despite trends that showed otherwise. This means that from 1995 to 2011, there was a steady decrease in the number of beds of lower category with a corresponding increase of higher-category hotels, a small increase in the beginning, but quite substantive after 2005. At the same time, there was an increase in the proportion of beds in the private accommodation sector from 32 per cent in 1989 to almost 50 per cent by 2011 (Table 9.3

Table 9.3 Accommodation facilities in Croatia (permanent beds) by type of accommodation and hotel category, structure in per cent and rate of change
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).

To deal with this apparent imbalance in accommodation availability, the Croatian Tourism Development Strategy to 2020 (2013) recommended an increase in the share of hotel beds from 13 per cent to 18 per cent by 2020 that include measures to upgrade the quality rankings of private accommodation and to allow developing small family-owned hotels, or boutique hotels, and to re-focus on rebuilding the currently dilapidated ex-state-run resorts in order to ensure, among else, a rational use of land and space. Apart from improving the quality of the overall tourism product, the justification for recommending the upgrading of private accommodation might lay in the fact that hotels have a much better occupancy rate than privateers; however, it is more likely that Croatia is hard up attracting large investment for tourism development and/or redevelopment of large hotel projects given (a) the unresolved issue of land ownership and (b) the seasonality factor which severely detracts large investment, notably in more remote areas.

This recommendation seems rational enough only when the aggregated performance of various types of accommodation facilities is compared with private accommodation which only appears to be underperforming (Table 9.4), compared with the occupancy rates of 39 per cent in hotels. However, it is interesting to note the growth rate in 2005–2011 for the private sector accommodation. Also, the occupancy figures on many islands are the reverse of what is shown in Table 9.4. That is, most of the occupancy is in private accommodation.

Table 9.4 Occupancy rates (permanent beds) according to main types of accommodation and hotel categories in per cent
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To conclude however, given that mechanisms which would enable the implementation of strategic recommendations have not been put in place, it is most reasonable to assume that the implementation of this strategic plan is yet another pipe-dream. Which means that with a sluggish economic activity for the foreseeable future, and where the tourism’s contribution to GDP is continuously increasing (8.3 billion Euro in 2015), the demand for land for tourism development will continue unabated, while developers and investors will resort to taking ad hoc steps when spatial challenges arise.

Abandoned Tourism Resorts: The Case of Haludovo and Kupari

In this section, assessment and analysis is made about the two well-known, and abandoned, tourist resorts. This section will:

  • briefly highlight the approach to tourism development—past and present; and

  • discuss the consequences of officious constraints imposed by the government and municipalities who have failed to legally determine the rights and obligations of owners and other communities within these tourism areas.

Two different tourism resorts are presented in Fig. 9.1. Both tourism resorts are located in extremely attractive locations, are well planned and have complete infrastructure. Their current status of the abandoned tourism zones serves to call into question the rationality and cost-effectiveness of spatial in these areas. Importantly, it should be a red flag for the government for allowing so many former tourism resorts to waste in abandonment and for not realising the capital potential of such sites for years, as if the land was worthless. The two tourism zones are Haludovo on the island of Krk in the north Adriatic and Kupari near Dubrovnik in the south Adriatic.

Fig. 9.1
figure 1

Location of the two abandoned tourism zones in Croatia

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Haludovo Tourism Zone, Malinska, Island of Krk

Haludovo was developed in 1971 as the most modern and up-market hotel resort on Adriatic. It occupied 25 hectares of land, and the resort was planned as an urban-architectural unit that would provide its guests with great comfort, all of the services they need and a direct contact with nature. The entire hotel complex had 1792 beds, the beach area was able to accommodate 2500 users simultaneously and there were 450 parking spaces. The resort consisted of three parts—hotel Palace, hotel Tamaris and Fishermen’s Village. Hotel Palace had 485 beds and its restaurant was able to accommodate up to 600 guests. The hotel also had a sports centre and a clinic. Hotel Tamaris had 289 rooms with 526 beds and 119 spare beds. Before renovation, the restaurant seated 447 and after renovation 600. The Fishermen’s Village was designed as a fishing village with a small harbour for yachts. In the style of dense Mediterranean architecture, the “village” had 14 luxury suites and 12 rooms with a total of 102 beds. Next to the Village, there were 33 villas with 4 beds each and 18 villas with 6 beds each. The capacity was increased in 1984 with the completion of 20 buildings with family suites, called Lavender. Each building consisted of 4 apartments, and in total they had 320 beds. The population of the Malinska municipality between 1961 and 2011 is shown in Table 9.5.

Table 9.5 Population of Malinska municipality 1961–2011
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The investment amounted to 25 million US dollars, and at the time it was, arguably, one of the biggest hotel resorts in the world. Although the investment in infrastructure, facilities and the landscaping did not prove cost-effective in the beginning, Haludovo was the genesis of development and modernisation of the local community. The complex provided 270 permanent jobs, and about 250 people found seasonal employment annually (Radić, 2009). The area was also demographically rejuvenated. The population of municipality of Malinska in 1971 was about 300 only to increase to 700 in the following decade (Radić, 2009). The impact of Haludovo resort on tourist arrivals and overnights was significant, as shown in Table 9.6, from 1971, the year of resort completion, the number of arrivals and overnights more than doubled by 1981 (Radić, 2009).

Table 9.6 Number of tourist arrivals and overnights in Malinska municipality 1960–2008
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During the Homeland war, Haludovo was used to accommodate refugees and displaced people. The prolonged and less than ideal use of hotels for residential purposes leads to costly damage and their demise, and subsequently, hotel Tamaris was demolished in 2004, and the entire resort was prepared for privatisation.

However, it also needs to be said here that most of these resorts were already on the road towards dilapidation before the Homeland war, and it was only a matter of time until they would have succumbed to commercial redundancy. The reason for this is that during their very active life, the operating budget seldom allowed for proper maintenance, upgrading, landscaping and the 10-year or 12-year overhaul, or the budget was siphoned off for “other” needs. Despite the rhetoric of the time, these monolithic resorts were constructed very poorly. This did not only apply to Haludovo and Kupari resorts but to just about every state-owned tourism infrastructure along the coast and on the coastal islands. Hence, by the 1990s one can reasonably say that the majority of state-run tourism resorts and hotels were already in various stages of decay and obsoleteness, and the Homeland war simply accelerated the decay.

In the privatisation process, a number of unlawful steps were made on purpose to meet a particular investor’s interest. For example, the assessment of the resort’s true market value was not made transparent, and the final transaction involved the purchase of the resort buildings only and not the complex land. Thus, the buildings were now in private ownership, and the land under them and around them was either owned by the municipality or the Croatian government or both, either way an absurd situation. Obviously, the unresolved issue of land ownership hampered renovation, extension or redevelopment of the accommodation facilities, and by 2001 the decaying buildings and infrastructure were unable to meet the visitor expectations, and the resort was shut down in 2002. Given that this is a very beautiful area already equipped with all the necessary infrastructure and one ready for re-construction, it is more than justifiable to call on the government and local municipality to question their rationality for such an incompetent and almost criminal utilisation of the resort’s land. Of course, no one has even bothered to ask what happened to the now unemployed and displaced people of the Malinska community.

Kupari Tourism Zone Near Dubrovnik

The Kupari tourism resort, named after a close-by village of Kupari near Dubrovnik, was developed in the same way as the Haludovo and was one of the prettiest resorts on Adriatic. However, the first construction of this tourism resort began in the early 1920s, when private capital from the Czech Republic was invested in a two-storey hotel “Kupari” with pavilions and a Grand Hotel. After the Second World War, the Yugoslav People’s Army further developed the resort by building new accommodations for the vacationing military personnel and their families. Due to different ownership and management structure, and a gradual development over time, the Kupari resort did not have a significant impact on the local community. The population of Kupari rose only slightly from 1948 to 1971, from 242 to 354 residents as shown in Table 9.7 (Croatian Bureau of Statistics, 2015b).

Table 9.7 Population of Kupari in 1948–2001
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The entire resort occupied over 35 hectares of land divided in two sub-zones—Kupari with an area of 28 ha and smaller Srebreno resort occupying 7.6 ha. There were 2000 beds in total in four hotels—Mladost, Goričina, Pelegrin and Galeb. As the resort developed, so has the number of tourist arrivals and overnights, and by the 1980, the resort recorded about 57,000 tourist arrivals or about 205,000 overnights (Tables 9.8 and 9.9) (Žabica, 1965).

Table 9.8 Number of tourist arrivals and overnights in Kupari, 1936–1938
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Table 9.9 Number of tourist arrivals and overnights in Kupari, 1962–1965 and 1980
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Since the Kupari tourism resort is located in the area that was part of the war zone during the Homeland war between 1991 and 1995, all the hotels were destroyed. During the war, the government assumed ownership of the entire resort, and since then, the government has been unsuccessful in selling the property. Owing to the attractiveness of the coast and picturesque Kupari village and its proximity to the UNESCO’s World Heritage Site, Dubrovnik, touristic activities take place in the Kupari village vis-à-vis private accommodation. Needless to say, by 2001 the number of tourist arrivals and overnights was about 4100 arrivals and 14,000 overnights, a fraction of what was realised at the resort in 1980 (Ministry of Tourism, 2013).

Despite its extremely attractive location, the government-owned Kupari tourism resort had laid dormant and derelict for over 20 years, and as with the Haludovo resort, one can only beg the question as to why was this resort not rationalised, or crucially, what were the barriers that prevented its sale and redevelopment? The good news is that after all these years, the government has announced in April 2015 that it will call for an international tender to lease, and redevelop, Kupari for 99 years, and that six firms (Karisma Hotels Adriatic; Valamar Business Development; Rixos Group; Home Defence Cooperative Mir; Avenue Osteuropa GmbH, together with the hotel management firm, the Marriott International Inc.; and Titan Real Estate) have expressed an interest in investing up to 100 million Euros in the redevelopment project. At the time of writing this article, it was announced in the media in November 2015 that the Austrian company, Avenue Osteuropa GmbH, together with the hotel management firm, the Marriott International Inc., was awarded the competitive lease.

Discussion and Conclusion 2

By examining the conditions of tourism development in Croatia between 1945 and 1991, and during the transition period thereafter, it is possible to follow the trajectory of the policy interplay between tourism planning and spatial planning (Fig. 9.2). In doing so, two opposing approaches were contrasted: (1) tourism development of the centrally planned economy in the former Yugoslavia and (2) tourism development in Croatia’s free market economy, together with their advantages, disadvantages and long-term consequences.

Fig. 9.2
figure 2

Policy networks between tourism and physical planning

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Relationships between tourism and spatial planning on all levels are closely connected with law, economy and ecology. Any change in their interrelationships could have an impact on tourism and space.

It was strongly argued that the complexity of tourism development, especially in relation to land demand, requires a learned consideration about a multitude of factors and a delicate synchronisation or balancing act of legislation, regulatory policies and implementation. It was also highlighted that such a legislative and regulatory balancing act was something that Croatia did not have due to the rapid socio-political transition and changes to which neither legislation nor bureaucratic culture within its public service could cope efficiently. The consequences of that policy and regulatory dislocation at spatial planning and tourism development level were discussed and highlighted by analysing the two failed and abandoned tourism resorts. This helped to highlight an irrational use of very valuable land as a consequence of failed legislation and regulations, for example, the non-transparent processes of privatisation, and lack of reforms and/or the application of reforms in land ownership.

These arguments were built on a premise that every activity, in terms of spatial that involves tourism, must firstly satisfy legal, economic and ecological requirements. No doubt these factors are important, equally though, to implement and carry on with tourism activities in a legally designated area; it is necessary first to effectively and transparently apply the spatial and tourism development legislation and its regulatory mechanisms. This would go a long way in clearly identifying from the outset, the rights and obligations of all stakeholders, and importantly, it would resolve many of the current conflicts between potential investors and the government (at national, regional and local level). However, the reform process of spatial for touristic purposes at present remains stalled.

The two abandoned tourism resorts presented highlight the consequence of weak and poorly defined policies not only in tourism and spatial planning but also in the management of these resources. Twenty other tourism resorts met with similar consequences. Absurdly, while these resorts lay ruined and deserted, new tourism resorts are being planned in absence of proper access and infrastructure (Ministry of Construction and Physical Planning, 2012:52). The analysis of the two most representative tourism resorts clearly shows how a lack of coordinated policies and legal framework between different governments, coupled with a profound mismanagement of the resorts, has impeded their rejuvenation. No doubt, this will have negative long-term socio-economic impact on the local and regional communities, such as devaluation of land, sectoral unemployment and environmental devastation.

The abandoned resorts are most certainly pointed to an irresponsible use of land from both the economic and socio-environmental perspectives. The destruction of land and poor management of existing natural and human resources demonstrate not only the incompatibility between different policies but also the incompetence of the bureaucrats who manage these policies. The cause for the non-use of these tourism resorts also points the finger at the collusion between the government and private lobby groups whose emergence was the result of the new social and economic conditions and the then government in power right after 1990.

As already tried and tested in other countries with rich tourism history, tourism can significantly contribute to the country’s socio-economic development and its regional rejuvenation, but to successfully implement spatial planning for tourism development, a robust mechanism must be in place for a coordinated policy approach to such planning and subsequent development. To implement these mechanisms in Croatia, there is a pressing need for an effective and decentralised legislation at regional and local level (micro level) with a specific role for the planning of regional and local tourist needs, for example, to advise on and regulate spatial planning, to coordinate and synchronise spatial planning with tourism planning, to assess and regulate tourism development and its cost-benefits to the local and regional communities and to affect robust environmental husbandry policies and regulations in all tourism-zoned areas, resort areas including local waterways. In addition, there is a need to have an effective umbrella tourism spatial legislation at national level (macro level), which would address broader tourism spatial issues and provide the necessary legislative framework for tourism development and its spatial planning as a matter of national economic and development policy. Therefore, it is contested here that the future of Croatia’s tourism development/redevelopment and spatial planning for tourism is going to be best served by the local and regional communities who are involved with tourism face-to-face, and not necessarily by the tourism policy bureaucrats at the national level. This has proven to be the case with Kupari where spatial planning and tourism development policies, or redevelopment in this case, had been thought about and worked through at local, regional and national level. The very difficult issues of land rights, land ownerships, changes to the land registry, spatial planning, decontamination and sanitation of the resort site, environmental protection, the future scope of redevelopment and even building permits for this former public and military tourism resort were mostly solved at local and regional level, while tourism policy makers at the national level had to make sure that the issues being contested and settled were within the legal framework, hence, assuring a “green light” for the redevelopment of the resort. This clearly shows that when disparate and/or discordant spatial planning and tourism development/redevelopment policies are brought together in accord and harmony, there is little likelihood for any discordant outcomes of such policies. Perhaps, the Kupari’s road to redevelopment should serve Croatia well as a model for the redevelopment of its abandoned tourist zones or resorts.

Notes

  1. 1.

    Notice about term “spatial planning” which is “terminus technicus” (lat.). In European Union and its official documents, the term used is “spatial planning”. In the USA, term used is “physical planning” and in Australia the term is “land use”.

  2. 2.

    This research is a part of the scientific project Heritage Urbanism (HERU)—Urban and Spatial Models for Revival and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage (HERU-2032)—financed by Croatian Science Foundation, which is being carried out at the Faculty of Architecture University of Zagreb.