On the first day of August, 12,726 tourists were registered as overnighting in Dubrovnik, with 2569 guest arriving on that day

The news of a poor tourism season this year and a 12% drop in the number of overnight stays while the rest of Croatia records a 6% increase brought Nacional's team to the streets of Dubrovnik among tourists and the citizens themselves to find out what has made this tourism season so questionable in this most attractive Croatian city.

Either by chance or not, a day spent in the city showed that now more than ever, Dubrovnik is criticized for its high prices for medium quality, the lack of entertainment, excursions and adventure that would offer tourists more than just the Old Town and city walls, and the general lack of creativity in thinking of what will bring tourists back to Dubrovnik after they once visit the city under UNESCO protection. Truth be told, during Nacional's visit, there was no sign suggesting that there were fewer tourists than usual, nor was this expected during August.

In the summer months, cities like Dubrovnik fill up after 11 am. Even in the hottest midday sun, tourists wait in long lines to spend 50 kuna to walk along the Dubrovnik city walls, while on Stradun near Orlando's column, the Rector's Palace and other landmarks, one can hardly get by. However, it's difficult to tell whether these tourists visiting Dubrovnik by day are here on vacation or on a stop-over on one of the 500 cruise ships that sail into the Dubrovnik harbour each year. The people of Dubrovnik give contradictory information. Some say the city is filled with one and another, while others say that many more guests are visiting the Old Town, drinking a coffee or two and never come back.

On the first day of August, 12,726 tourists were registered as overnighting in Dubrovnik, with 2569 guest arriving on that day. In the first seven months of this year, there was a 1% increase in the number of tourists over the year before, with overnight stays 5% less than in 2005. The Tourist Board convinced us that the newspaper reports of a 12% drop in guests are not true. “There is a drop, but it is negligible as it is only 5%. This shows that guests are spending less time in Dubrovnik, though shorter vacations are the trend now, as European guests are now taking more vacations with less days each. Also, certain other tourism destinations have finally started functioning and the tourists are visiting other places. I think the stories of a poor season in Dubrovnik are overinflated, though I'm not sure in whose interests it would be to put a blemish on the city. I also think that the stories of overly high prices are exaggerated. If that were true, then we wouldn't see Croats as the third most common guests after the French and British. If Dubrovnik is so expensive, then why would the average Croats with a salary of 5000 kn come to vacation here? Our statistics show that they are vacationing here,” says Maja Milovcic from the Dubrovnik Tourist Board.

One of Dubrovnik's biggest problems is that at least 3000 beds are out of function due to the renovation of war-torn hotels: Plakira, Belvedere, Libertas and Bellevue. Today, Dubrovnik has a total of 16,806 beds including hotels, private rooms and apartments, vacation homes and camps. Hotels offer about 8500 beds, and 20% of these hotels are five-star hotels while only 30% are three-star hotels. The price for a double room in the highest hotel category is from 260 to 400 euro.

Nacional's team succeeded in finding out how Dubrovnik lives from tourism. At about 10 am on Stradun, where guests where drinking their morning coffee, which costs 8 kuna in some places and 13 kuna in others, Marko Breskovic, former member of the Dubrovnik troubadours and today owner of the jazz cafe reminded us that this was the 10th anniversary of the day when Dubrovnik was heavily shelled at two lovers on a beach in Zaton were killed. He says that people know that Dubrovnik was like Beirut then, and in the past ten years, tourism has done a lot.

“But this town wants and needs more! We must not be satisfied with mediocrity. We have a lack of beds, a lack of things for tourists to do; we have no real night life or place where rich people can spend their money. This won't kill us, but if we continue like this, our future will not be bright as this beautiful city and its walls will no longer be enough. Unless we begin to immediately fix these mistakes, in five or six years we will experience a serious tourism crisis and we will have to sell everything off for no money at all,” says Breskovic.

Ivan Rudenjak agrees. Rudenjak, owner of several cafes and restaurants in the centre of Dubrovnik, was one of the most responsible in receiving permission for Dubrovnik hospitality locales to work till 3 a.m. “We are trying to be a partner to the city, but there are always people against allowing things to unfold as they should in a real tourism town. A 30 m2 locale in the centre of Dubrovnik costs a million euro, while hotels are being sold for half that amount. That is insane. Lease costs in Dubrovnik have crossed over the boundary of reason and people will be left with no other option than to close their doors, as paying 160,000 kuna per month for a small cafe on Stradun is bound to result in failure. It is no wonder the prices are crazy, for this is the only way many can survive. From 100 kuna earned, the restaurant owner has to give 22 kuna in VAT, 3 kuna in consumption tax, not to mention the monument tax and other contributions, so do the math and you'll see why a cup of coffee has to cost so much,” warns Rudenjak.

Rudenjak added that there are 132 hospitality facilities in Dubrovnik, while before the war, there were only 50. “But at that time, Dubrovnik had 50 terraces with live music, while today there is not one. The jazz concerts in Breskovic's 'Trubadur' which attract Dubrovnik guests are shut down by police at midnight. That is unacceptable, for in other locales in the same city, much louder and more irritating music is allowed to play to morning,” he says.

Both Breskovic and Rudenjak admit that they've noticed fewer guests in Dubrovnik this year. They say that this is due to two reasons: the arrogant raising of prices in certain Dubrovnik hotels and the drop in hotel prices in Montenegro, where a bed costs only 10 euro. “Just the other day, 800 Italians arrived in the city, but only 200 stayed. The rest went to Montenegro. Dubrovnik will now have to fight for its survival, but it can only do that with hard work and state support,” they say. Unfortunately, they say that Dubrovnik is lacking one and the other.

“Guests most frequently criticize the lack of a real night life here. The city is dying. We needed ten years to convince the city government that when a play in the Summer Festival ends, at 1 a.m. the guest needs to have some place to sit and eat a sandwich or drink a beer. The locales in Dubrovnik cannot have the same working hours as a small town in continental Croatia where they have no tourism and do not live from tourism. We need night clubs, strip bars, casinos. That is how money is earned, and it looks as though Dubrovnik doesn't know how to do that,” concludes Rudenjak.

Painter Dusko Sibl, who spends six months of the year in Dubrovnik, overhead our conversation and joined in. “The people of Dubrovnik don't like to hear me say that it's too expensive for me to have a drink on Stradun, because a glass of wine costs 36 kuna, and they say that it's even more expensive on the Champs d'Elysee in Paris. But Paris is Paris and that city offers quality that Dubrovnik doesn't have. Also, a myth has been created about Dubrovnik as an elite destination, but it seems to me that guests are sometimes disappointed when they see how things really are. Some things are still reminiscent of socialism, and after so many years, there really is no excuse for that,” commented Sibl and added that the biggest problem is that in the last two years, Dubrovnik has become a monument that people come to see and then leave. These guests make Dubrovnik look full, but really these are only excursionists who buy a souvenir and then leave.

The souvenirs are what bother the people of Dubrovnik the most. Stradun is full of little boutiques in which souvenirs differ little or nothing from the stands selling souvenirs in much less prestigious tourism places. On the other hand, these shops are filled with tourists, happy to buy what they find within. Unlike these, Nacional's team found, the small galleries in the streets off Stradun are usually empty and nor are there many guests around the women sewing handicrafts as there are in the criticized Stradun souvenir shops. “Just because we want to be a prestigious city doesn't mean that our guests are prestigious,” commented one elderly man seeing that we found the lack of interest in authentic Dubrovnik handicrafts odd. A younger man from Zagreb commented on the exaggerated prices, “People are overly concerned over prices. Let's be realistic, there are places on Stradun where a cup of coffee costs 13 kuna, but only a few meters further, it costs 8 kuna, the same as in Zagreb. In some places, pizzas are really too expensive, but that's why I eat at 'Lokanda' where you can have real Dalmatian food for a reasonable price. The price of parking is scandalous. An hour's parking at the old town gates costs 30 kuna, and by the Hilton, 3 hours costs 180 kuna!”

The poor souvenirs and high prices were no concern for two twentyish sisters from Australia who were happy to pose for Nacional's camera. “Dubrovnik is absolutely fantastic. Croatia is a very popular destination in Australia and that's why we're here. We're staying in private accommodation which is 70 euro a day and we don't think it's too expensive, we're getting by just fine,” they said. Unlike the young Australian girls, director Kresimir Dolancic criticized Dubrovnik prices. “But the prices are not the biggest problem. I think that the most absurd thing is that there is nothing to do after midnight. I don't mean bars and clubs, every city has those. Dubrovnik is missing something theatrical, live, spontaneous.”

Nacional's team then visited the Port of Dubrovnik, where 700,000 guests and 501 vessels docked last year, including cruise ships which alone brought 550,000 guests to the city. These massive cruise ships, which bring mostly Americans and Spaniards to the city for a few hours, arouse varying opinions in the city. Some think that cruise passengers spend nothing in town and are therefore unwanted guests, while others reminded us that as soon as they sail into the harbour, they pay Dubrovnik a $5.50 dollar landing fee and at least buy a souvenir in town, which is not negligible earnings considering that there are more than half a million cruise guests each year.

Director of the Dubrovnik Port Authority, Vlaho Durkovic explained why cruise ships are important for Dubrovnik and why it is wrong to think we need to “take their money”. “Cruise ships are neither a good nor an evil for this city, but more than $22 million has been invested worldwide in the construction of these ships and the cruise market makes a profit. And the profit goes to the shipper and the ports of call. These tourists want to see where they've docked and they pay for excursions that cost between 40 and 60 euro. Our profit is there,” says Durkovic. However, he warned that the city needs to know how to “sell” the port of call. And, he says, Dubrovnik does not know that, though with the proper plan and a little hard work, the city could earn $20 million more from cruise ships each year. “There is no ratio of value for their money, we greet the cruise passengers flippantly, and three minutes before they dock no one knows where to find a bus that can take them to the Old Town. The people of Dubrovnik have to realize that this is a lot of money to treat flippantly. That is why I have advocated that Dubrovnik establish a company or institution that will properly and professionally deal with these problems. From marketing to organizing cruise passenger visits to controlling that we actually carry out what we said we would. When things are brought to that level and services are of a higher quality, then we can raise our prices. But until the service is improved, that mustn't happen. Proof of that is Dubrovnik itself, prices have jumped without an improvement of content or services, and the drop in tourist numbers is then the logical result,” says Durkovic.

Regardless of whether the stories of a poor tourism season are exaggerated or not, it is clear that raising the prices without providing the tourist with value for that money has brought Dubrovnik into a situation which will not be critical in the short-term but, if it continues, will lead to a crisis in the long-term. On the other hand, guests will always visit the city, though with the current approach to tourism, it is unlikely that they will return. Therefore, it is odd that some Dubrovnik residents have perceived the recent criticisms as an attack while others perceive it as envy from the rest of Croatia, instead of seeing them as a call to correct certain mistakes as return the city its former status as the most attractive Croatian tourism product.

‘We know how to take tourism money'

President of the Dubrovnik Tourist Board, Duro Market, is optimistic about Dubrovnik's tourism. “Last year, Dubrovnik had an average earning of 110 euro daily, while Opatija had 70 euro. Dubrovnik revenues and the average spending of tourists here is the highest in Croatia and we cannot accept the criticism that we do not know how to take the guest's money. We know very well. Dubrovnik is still a prestigious destination. This year, our airport has seen 1.2 million passengers, we are experiencing an explosion of cruise ship tourism in which we are fifth in the Mediterranean and therefore, I have no idea where these stories of a tourism failure are coming from. What does need to improve is the shopping on Stradun. We have a mass of souvenir shops were they product quality does not suit the city's image. But these are knickknacks that tourists love to buy. Many criticize that we do not have exclusive shops, but this just doesn't work on Stradun. We had Zlatarna Celje, Stefanel and a crystal shop from Rogaška Slatina, but they couldn't survive because there was no interest in their products. In general, I don't like to hear people say that Dubrovnik is oriented towards elite tourism; I think that it's more accurate to say that we are oriented towards high quality tourism, and we have that. Within high quality tourism, elite tourism is only a small part at the top of the pyramid. We need to insist on quality, and time will bring the elite.”

>email to:Marina Bilus