Public-private Partnership for the Development of Tourism in Rural Areas (2008)

Sustainable tourism development is facing many challenges, especially in rural areas which are particularly sensitive to social, economic, environmental and other impact of tourism. One of the greatest challenges and outstanding issues is definitely the identification of the most efficient way to manage a rural destination. The private sector – understandably so – cannot mange the destination, because then the profit race would shunt aside the “ nobler goals” – first and foremost sustainable tourism development. However, practice has shown that neither the public sector – local government units or Tourism Boards – con fully exert all functions pertaining to destination management. This paper sets out to show that answers to these questions should be sought in the model of public-private partnership. The authors believe that optimal solutions should be looked for in this area, considering that, at the current stage of development, only public-private partnership can – in the authors’ opinion – “ offset” successfully the blind and inconsiderate private-sector race for profit on the one hand, and transfer to the public sector the much-needed “ entrepreneurial spirit” which it does not possess, on the other. The authors base their conclusions on the example of Istria, the region with the most developed tourism in Croatia, which accounts for a third of Croatia’ s turnover in tourism. Although Istra is a relatively rich region with considerable public-sector budgets, a long-standing tradition in tourism and highly developed facilities, it still has not optimal tourism management solutions, which fact undermines the competitiveness of its tourism product and consequently of that of Croatia. This is especially true of rural areas, which, lacking strong hotel chains and wealthy cities with full budgets (this being the situation in coastal resorts) are left to their own devices and exposed to uncontrolled rise of real estate prices, unchecked and inconsiderate land development and, generally speaking, to a comprehensive decline of spatial, social, cultural and other values. This is exacerbated by the lack of a rural tourism product of the adequate promotion thereof. For these reasons, rural areas “ crave” optimal solutions for high Quality management of the territory, the destination and its development. Reasons for hope are provided by individual instances, one of which – described in the paper – has occurred in rural Istria. This is the example of Bale, a precedent of sorts, optimally combining economic and tourism development with a strong commitment to sustainability and the preservation of authentic and autochthonous values of that area. The involvement of the local population, the public sector, private investors and any other actors able to participate in any way in destination development, makes the example of this small Istrian locality an excellent model of destination management. In addition to presenting the case of Bale, the authors propose their own model of destination management and make suggestions for the implementation of similar models in other, not only rural, destinations, in Croatia and beyond.