Study: SDŽ Must Improve Infrastructure and Disperse Tourism

The Split-Dalmatia County (SDŽ) is experiencing the highest growth in tourist traffic in Croatia, making it imperative to improve infrastructure and address the labor shortage and disperse tourism to the islands and hinterland, it was stated on Monday during the presentation of the Study on the Accepting Capacities of Tourism in the SDŽ area.

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Zoran Klarić from the Institute for Tourism assessed that the current communal, infrastructural, and accommodation capacities can handle nearly six million tourist overnight stays annually in Split-Dalmatia County, but that this is a threshold number that, if exceeded, could create “crisis situations.”

Namely, as stated, Split-Dalmatia County achieves an average annual growth in tourist traffic of 11 percent, the highest of all counties in Croatia, and it is essential to address the difficulties of communal and traffic infrastructure and the labor shortage to avoid tourist dissatisfaction, and it is also necessary to expand tourism development to the Dalmatian hinterland to avoid tourist pressure on coastal areas.

“The key problems in Split-Dalmatia County are communal and traffic infrastructure, and we concluded that due to the significant growth in tourist traffic, crisis situations could arise during the peak season, such as power and water supply being cut off in certain situations,” warned Klarić.

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He explained that such crisis situations do not currently exist, but could arise in the coming years.

According to him, the problem of electricity can be solved with several wind and solar power plants, and regarding water supply, especially on the islands, “the problem of pipes that lose 50 percent of water needs to be reduced to 40 percent, and the water supply will be resolved.”

“Tourist growth in SDŽ must be accompanied by adequate communal and traffic infrastructure,” said Klarić. He specifically mentioned the need to address traffic congestion between Split and Omiš, where multi-kilometer queues of vehicles and multi-hour traffic jams occur during the summer months.

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Klarić also warned of the limited capacity of beaches and the labor shortage, especially on the islands. This problem, according to him, needs to be addressed at the national level with stimulating measures and resolving housing issues.

State Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism Tonči Glavina emphasized that the problem of communal and traffic infrastructure in Split-Dalmatia County needs to be addressed systematically from the national to the local level. He reminded that the Ministry of Tourism has initiated the formation of a budget intended for tourism at the European Union level, from which tourist infrastructure could also be financed.

The director of the Croatian Tourist Board Kristjan Staničić stated that the study from the Institute for Tourism is the basis for the development of tourism in SDŽ, and the director of the Tourist Board of SDŽ Joško Stella added that the main goal is to develop tourism in a way that the local population is satisfied.

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“The study opens our eyes, as it shows that we must disperse tourism across the Dalmatian hinterland. Concentrating tourism only on the coast would create pressure on that area and would not be an even development of the county,” said the Split-Dalmatia County Prefect Blaženko Boban.