Abstract
Cross-border areas and cross-border cooperation are one of the priorities of the EU policy. Those areas, often rich in recreational, cultural and natural resources provide a great potential for the development of sustainable tourism. The article analyzes the tourism in the Croatian-Hungarian (HR-HU) cross-border area under the assumption that different interventions can influence the perception of tourists and contribute to the realization of the full potential of the area. The method applied in the analysis is the gravity model. The results obtained by the model were tested with online in-depth interviews with three experts having backgrounds in entrepreneurship, decision making and the non-governmental sector, and focus groups, consisting of 31 experts in the field, show that altogether 72% of the tourists cross the border during a trip to the HR-HU border regions. Almost half of the respondents plan and organize programs during the trip. The main sources of collecting information about a trip are friends, family members and acquaintances, while 80% of the respondents also use at least one online tool for planning of the trip. In order to improve tourism indicators in the Croatian-Hungarian cross-border area, development of a cross-border online platform is being envisaged that would integrate different services and attractions, collect and utilize data, being the most important new raw material, thus opening a completely new space for virtual tourism.
Highlights
Cross-border areas are one of the priorities of the European Union (EU) policy and cross-border cooperation has been stimulated by the EU for 25 years via the EU Interreg Program
The gravity model in tourism for econometric estimation used in the study was [29]: ln TAijt = αi + λ j + δt + β1 ln Yit + β2 ln Y jt + β3 ln Dij + βijt Aijt + uijt, where TAijt is a dependent variable that represents the total amount of tourists traveling from country i to country j in the year t, Yit is the absolute GDP in the country of origin i in year t, Yjt the absolute
Even though tourism in the Croatian-Hungarian cross-border area exists, it does not fulfill its potential estimated with the presented gravity model
Summary
Cross-border areas are one of the priorities of the European Union (EU) policy and cross-border cooperation has been stimulated by the EU for 25 years via the EU Interreg Program. Cross-border areas are often rich in recreational, cultural and natural resources for sustainable tourism development, they rarely provide integrated common packages [1]. Cross-border cooperation in tourism development is often shed by the competitive pressures, which force each side of the border to draw tourists instead of investing in cooperation [2]. Lack of cooperation often leads to poor presentation of tourism attractions in the local communities’ tourism offer and the Croatian-Hungarian border is not an exception. Social and cultural potential of these attractions near the border, their poor exploitation cases not just missed revenue and rather low-level of cultivation of the existing values decreasing the social resilience of the region. The studied border includes three counties on the Hungarian side (Zala, Somogy and Baranya) and four on the Croatian side (Međimurje, Koprivnica-Križevci, Virovitica-Podravina and Osijek-Baranja Counties; see Figure 1)
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