April the 19th, 2025 – As we wrote recently, Croatian rural tourism has been gaining rapidly in popularity, but much more promotion is required to see it succeed.
As Poslovni Dnevnik/Aleksandra Kuratko Pani writes, We often hear about modest revenues earned from Croatian rural tourism, even though rural areas cover more than 90 percent of Croatia’s territory. Over the last decade, its development has been recognised in numerous strategic documents, including the Sustainable Tourism Strategy until 2030. Plenty of businesses across Croatia have, in addition to their own investments, managed to use cash from various development funds.
the missing ingredient – proper croatian rural tourism promotion
Tourism trends have shown a continuous increase in interest among both domestic and foreign guests and tourists in rural Croatia and its authentic offer. That raises the question of how we might actually further develop sustainable Croatian rural tourism in a concrete way.
The majority of service providers within the bubble of Croatian rural tourism are micro and small businesses. They generally have limited capacities for independent promotion, and official data on the number of service providers in special forms of tourism, such as rural agro-tourism, adventure, hunting, fishing, and the like, doesn’t even exist. The latest available data on rural tourism dates from 2012, when, according to research by the Croatian Chamber of Economy, 447 Croatian rural tourism service providers were recorded.
The Croatian Rural Tourism Association is otherwise a national association that currently has 60 members. It has been continuously engaged in the development and promotion of Croatian rural tourism since its establishment back in 2016. At the initiative of this association, the first Croatian National Tourist Board (HTZ) national campaign on rural tourism called “Experience local. Explore rural Croatia” was implemented in 2021. The move more formally began the continuous promotion of rural tourism.
a lack of presence online
Despite efforts, disappointing results of the analysis of tourist board websites from the same year showed an extremely low representation of rural and village tourism. On the other hand, the results of the Tomas survey on tourist attitudes and spending in Croatia from 2022/2023 confirmed the growing interest in rural Croatia, as well as significant space for the further development of specialised tourist portals.
Therefore, in cooperation with the Križevci Polytechnic, the aforementioned association collected data on service providers in Croatian rural tourism through student internships during 2023/2024. Preliminary data showed that 40 percent of service providers don’t even have their own websites, and 20 percent don’t have any presence on social media and the Internet in general. That clearly indicated the need for their stronger online presence. As such, the Croatian Rural Tourism Association initiated the development of the first domestic non-profit rural tourism portal, which is expected to go live at the end of April.
The collected data represents a unique source for the competent institutions, the academic community and other stakeholders. The very first set of processed data was published in the analysis of the number of service providers in various special forms of tourism operating in Croatia’s more rural areas.
The analysis showed that, out of a total of 1,600 service providers recorded in all analysed special forms of tourism, 1,119, or 70%, are engaged in rural agrotourism. This is followed by service providers in cultural (176), adventure (122), fishing (72), equestrian (54), hunting (42) and health tourism (12). Surprisingly positive results were shown by the analysis of rural agrotourism, a very complex activity carried out by farmers who provide tourist and/or hospitality services. Additionally, large number of them are also involved in the preservation and promotion of the cultural heritage of the Croatian countryside.
Primorje-Gorski Kotar County leads the group
The highest number of rural cultural attractions managed by service providers was recorded in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County (27). That county was followed by Istria County (17) and Split-Dalmatia County (13). The category included museums, ethno villages and collections, and interpretation centres focused on the promotion of cultural heritage.
Primorje-Gorski Kotar County also recorded the highest number of adventure tourism service providers (19), which includes adrenaline parks and various adventures such as rafting, river kayaking, sport climbing, and so on. Equestrian tourism service providers are registered separately, with the largest number recorded in Karlovac County, while Osijek-Baranja County recorded the largest number of service providers in fishing (11) and hunting tourism (7).
a unique portal for croatian rural tourism
The development of the aforementioned portal is being financially supported by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the Ministry of Tourism and Sport, and the Croatian National Tourist Board. Croatian rural tourism has a value chain. In addition to service providers, their families and employees, it also includes numerous other businesses from almost all sectors – from finance, to the food industry to transport and energy.
Owing to that, the portal is being developed as a collaborative platform of the public, private and civil sectors that jointly contribute to the sustainability of rural areas in the interest of society as a whole. Therefore, in addition to charging for user packages at affordable prices, there’s also a plan to include sponsors and donors from the private and public sectors.
This will be a unique portal on a global scale. For the first time, all special forms of tourism in Croatia will be included in one place.
