1. Strategic planning vs. formalist indulgement

THE RESPONSE ON GOVERNMENTAL STRATEGIES AND POLICIES THROUGH SPATIAL INTERVENTION

The Croatian tourist offering is still based on the sun and sea (Institute for tourism, research Tomas), the main policy of every Croatian government in the last 20 years is reorientation of this offering, with the aim to attract a new niche of the segmented tourist market.

While policies oriented to nautic tourism, construction of the golf courses or resorts are not dealing primarily with the problem of public space, the strategy of cultural tourism is giving a clear idea of the concept of cities designed for tourists is what Croatian policy makers are having.

HERITAGE INDUSTRY

Strategy of cultural tourism is based on the notion that culture is something that Croatian already has, so the development of the cultural tourism is based on the idea that all we need is just to pack out culture for tourists and eventually sell it. Already from the title it is obvious (tourism and culture) that the aim of the strategy is not to develop a cultural industry as an industry with the export potential (Craig), nor to invest in the development of local practices, contemporary or youth culture.

Its aim was to test existing cultural recourses and develop them in the Croatian tourist product. So if the use of terminology would be correct it would mean that the only strategy considering culture and tourism is that dealing solely with the measurements for the development of the heritage industry.

When understood from this point of view strategy is very clear. It is a set of policies typical for the heritage industry, already well developed in many European countries, which saw its flourishement in the second half of the 20th century in Great Britain.

These measures are very doubtful. Starting from the very title “heritage” is considered to be a very dangerous concept. Sociologists of tourism are claiming that heritage unlike history is an unproblematic concept; it is dead and safe, while history is uninterrupted and dangerous. Heritage trivializes or ignores diverse forms of social experience like war, exploitation, hunger , disease … and make a set of heritage fantasies instead of trueyl understanding the history of it (Urry 99,102).

McDysnefication

The first set of measures of strategy which results we can already observe regarding territory deals with the cities that can become international tourist attractions. These are blockbuster locations like “Dubrovnik”, “Split”, “Pula” and “Trogir”…are locations recognized by UNESCO as World Herritage Sites. In strategic terms they are called “Unique Selling Points”. “Opatija” is not at quite the same level on the value scale, but its policies are certainly following the policies of the previously named cities.

The consequences for those locations of the implemented heritage industry strategies are known as the processes of mcdisnyficaton. It is a standardized processes of transformation of the historic city centers of the European cities into the thematic parks. On the level of the change of the physical space buildings and streets are starting to look like movie sets, there is a clear policy for the destruction of any sign of the contemporariness, starting from the unified and historic graphic design, strong conservation policy allowing solely reconstruction and adaptation as a methods, excluding new architectural language, there is a programmatic orientation towards traditional bakeries, shops, and related events.

Post-tourist and McDysnification

The other problem of Croatian policies is that we are coping old strategies, the number of tourists that want thematic park is becoming smaller.

It is obvious that it is a prefabricated product and like that it does not suit to the sensibility of the post tourist. Post tourist thinks of himself as a passenger not a tourist, that is way he is shopping in the delicatessen and not in supermarkets, or translated in tourist speak he/she does not want to “follow the crowd”. By going on arranged mass trips, tour operators are deigning “post tourist” a trip tailored to the individual and therefore post tourist prefers to organise the trip by himself (Feifer).

Post tourist belongs to the growing new petit burgeois that has led to the collapse of mass tourist models, as well as the search for cultural tourism, post tourist is claiming the right to authencity of the places that he is going to visit.

AUTHENCITY

From the discourse of all the professionals included in the tourist industry and reflexive practices (from hotel manager to sociologist of tourism) in Croatia it is obvious that they believe that authenticity really exists.

Even if in the literature about tourism, already said everything that could be said about the concept of authenticity in Croatia it is still an unproblematic concept. The question of authenticity is the central question of the literature of tourism, but also of the postmodernism in general and the posttourism specifically. ( Ritzer, Liska str.107 )

It is introduced in the sociology of tourism by Dean MacCannell in is pioneering work “The Tourist” (1969).

According to MacCannellu, tourism is the basis for the understanding of the modern society, and a quest for authenticity is a basis for the understanding of modern man, it is the reason for his journeys. Modern man is considering authenticity and reality always somewhere else in other historical periods and cultures, in the more pure and simple ways of living ( MacCannell).

Unlike MacCannella most of the writers in the 70s considered authenticity to be a permanent and no mediated value. From the position of the travelers that detest falsification of authentic locations and ways of living, they imply that history is full of “value” while present is “valuless”.

Authors of those texts (like Greenwood) are moving away from these ideas, realizing that they came from their specific position in the social field.

Value legitimated through the discourse of the history of art of the authentic Diocletian palace is equally constructed as the valueless of the thematic park of a Dalmatian village recently created in the USA.

Today we know that the authenticity is based on the class, sex and nation socially constructed doubtful category.