Competitiveness of Croatian Nautical Tourism

Abstract

While nautical tourism is experiencing a strong demand in the Mediterranean, this growth presents a significant challenge to destination planners. The question of how well nautical tourism destinations are meeting increased demand, in terms of both capacity and quality, is of crucial importance for nautical tourism destinations and their competitiveness. While measuring destination competitiveness is a common practice worldwide, the competitiveness of nautical tourism has not received much research attention. The study reported here aims to fill this gap by addressing not only the competitive position of countries in the Mediterranean, especially Croatia, but also by providing a valuable discussion on issues relating to measuring nautical tourism competitiveness. The study focuses on nautical tourism supply, price competitiveness, and nautical tourists' perceptions of competitiveness. The results revealed that the natural resources and feeling of safety are the strongest Croatian advantage, but this is undermined by the lower standards of infrastructure and services with accompanied lower value for money. While this, at the moment, does not appear to adversely affect demand for the Croatian nautical tourism, failure to address these issues would reduce competitiveness and threaten the long-term sustainability of nautical tourism.