Role of sport and recreation in the development of Croatian tourism

Abstract

Tourism in Croatia is on the turning point of its development. War devastation in Croatia negatively affected tourism. The process of restoration of Croatian tourism should not only renovate the ruined tourist facilities, but it should also overcome the disadvantages of the past development of tourism. One of the important factors of the variety and quality of tourist offer are sports-recreational activities and programmes which provide the possibility of active rest and recreation. In Croatian tourism, the sports-recreational offer has reached a certain level of development, but this offer is primarily oriented towards mass tourism. The policy of the development of Croatian tourism, which is directed towards strengthening of qualitative factors of tourist offer, expresses the need of innovating the sports-recreational offer which will be compatible with the new quality of Croatian tourism. This paper treats tourism and sport as interrelated fields, and emphasizes the factors of their interdependence. A short survey of historical interdependence of tourism and sport is also given in this paper. The role of sport in modern tourism is rather significant, because it becomes one of the essential motives for travelling to certain tourist destinations. The role of sport in tourism is manifested through numerous functions that are common to sport and tourism. These functions are: the health function, educational function, socio-political function and economic functions. Sport and recreation, apart from the fact that they enrich the tourist offer, often become the main motive for travelling to certain tourist destinations. Such trips represent a special selective type of tourism - the sports-recreational tourism. Apart from humanistic functions, sports-recreational tourism is the creator of certain economic values. The economic effects of sport in tourism are realized within tourist organizations, but also outside tourism (sporting equipment industry, building, handicraft trades, trade, etc.). This paper also gives the survey of the achieved economic effects of sport and recreation in Croatian tourism on the basis of several indicators: the number of the realized "sports room/nights", the number of users of sports-recreational services, and the achieved profit from sports-recreational services. These indicators also confirm the thesis that the sports-recreational services are an income-oriented category. The paper concludes with the evaluation of development possibilities of sports-recreational tourism in Croatia.