Paradise regained

Croatia once attracted 400,000 British tourists a year. After being ravaged by war, it is slowly regaining its popularity with holiday makers. Unfortunately the travel industry has changed and with competition from long-haul destinations, form

War zones and violent trouble spots do not immediately spring to mind as possible holiday destinations. Yet some countries on the tourist trail have had to cope with turmoil for years, while others are battling to recover from a full-blown war which has destroyed their tourism industry.

Getting back on the tourist map can be a long haul. For some destinations it is not as simple opening the doors again to the tourist industry once the troubles have blown over. Croatia, for example, has found that the world had moved on. Back in the Eighties the country’s Dalmatian coastline, situated in the former Yugoslavia, was attracting up to 400,000 British tourists a year. Then the Balkan troubles erupted, Croatia declared independence from the rest of Yugoslavia in 1991 and a bloody peace was finally established in the region in 1995. Last year Croatia attracted its highest number of British tourists since the war – 62,000.

Josip Lozic, acting director of the Croatian Tourist Board (CTB) says: “In ten years the market has changed dramatically. Long-haul and new destinations have increased in popularity. It would be unrealistic to expect in five to ten years a return to 400,000. There may be 150,000.”

Croatia, once featured in the brochures of the mainstream tour operators as a cheap European sun destination, must now compete in a changed market, where tourists are attracted by affordable fly-drive deals to Florida and packages to Thailand.

Julia Berg, a director at Charisma, the former public relations company for the CTB, believes that a lack of knowledge among British tourists about the geography of the former Yugoslavia, the 1991 name change for Croatia and the unconnected continuing problems in the Balkans involving Kosovo, have made it difficult to attract British tourists back to the area.

The emergence of long-haul destinations has forced the CTB to reposition Croatia as a holiday destination for upmarket tourists, who do not want to visit over-developed resorts. After the war the Croatian government, instead of embarking on a heavy building programme, set about refurbishing the state-owned hotels, which are now being sold off to overseas hotel chains. A small marketing budget was also used by the UK office of the CTB to fund a press campaign and PR activity in 1999.

Lozic says: “We have had very good media coverage over the past few years. We didn’t have much money to put into advertising. Most of the promotion was done by journalists pushing Croatia as an ecologically sound destination, not overly built up. Croatia is going for quality clients rather than sheer volume as a long-term goal.”

Recapturing tourists

While the destination has yet to recapture a significant number of British tourists, visitors from countries nearby are returning. Germany accounted for 1 million visitors last year – half the country’s pre-war levels.

Lozic says: “The British market is the slowest because it is dependent on the number of flights and the commercial commitment of tour operators.”

Berg adds: “The recovery started last summer in Dubrovnik with Croatian Airlines having to lay on two extra flights a week from the UK.”

Although Thomson – the only mass market UK operator featuring Croatia – is still offering the same number of holidays as it was five years ago, one independent operator, Holiday Options, is setting up charter flights from UK airports which are traditionally associated with more prosaic destinations such as Newcastle.

The UK branch of the CTB is currently waiting to hear if it will have a marketing budget for 2001. Berg adds: “Croatia is at risk of missing the boat. It should be having a high profile advertising and public relations programme running now, with features on TV travel programmes.”

She claims that in the past, when Croatia was featured on the BBC Holiday programme, there would be at least 5,000 follow-up inquiries.

Like Croatia, Egypt was forced to rejuvenate its tourist industry from a standing start, after the Luxor tourist massacre in 1997.

Kuoni managing director Sue Biggs says: “After the massacre the business stopped overnight. From a base of millions of tourists it went to zero. It has seen a wonderful recovery”

The Egyptian State Tourist Office recognised the fact that, despite the country’s unique attractions, it had to act by running a major advertising campaign with the strapline: ” I Wish I was in Egypt” and working with tour operators to put security operations in place.

Unsaleable

Biggs says: “If the tourist destination doesn’t do anything about it then it can become unsaleable.”

When the Foreign Office warning was lifted, Kuoni set about trying to stimulate demand for the destination with price incentives, advertising and public relations activities, including celebrity endorsements.

Biggs also used PR to stimulate travel to Hong Kong, after the Chinese handover caused the numbers of tourists to plummet.

She says: “The business fell off the cliff. Four months afterwards we started to do stories about the Star Ferry and shopping trips. It was a case of drip feeding stories.”

While Egypt was able to put in place a quick recovery plan, other destinations have had to deal with a constant stream of troubles. One of these is Israel, which has seen tourism suffer over the years because of the ongoing conflict.

“In late 1993, after the peace process had begun, we started working with the Israeli Tourist Board, says Hugh Burkitt, chairman of Burkitt DDB. “It looked very positive for tourism in Israel. But subsequently the politics of Israel have become more troubled and latterly, through this past year, we worked exclusively on Eilat, which is a resort located on the Red Sea.”

The ad campaign, which never even mentioned Israel, used the strapline: “Right now it’s sunny in Eilat.”

Burkitt says: “It recognises an acceptance of the fact that, given the amount of competition in the tourism market, people might have shied away from going to Israel at that point.”

He thinks the same strategy could be used to promote Israel’s unique attractions, such as the Dead Sea, to British tourists. Burkitt claims other markets, such as Germany, have remained resilient to the troubles by focusing on the attraction of places such as Jerusalem to Christian pilgrims.

South Africa was also forced to reappraise its tourist industry, following a spate of bad publicity over rising levels of violence and crime.

Honeymoon period

Paul Lacey, sales and marketing director for Hayes and Jarvis, says: “South Africa went through a honeymoon period after Mandela came to power and while its hosted the Rugby World Cup, but then, for a number of reasons, it started to get poor publicity.”

He adds: “If a destination is to compete with others, it has to be aware of its benefits and recognise what may put people off.”

South African Tourism reacted last November by investing &£40m in an international advertising campaign, through Rightford, Ogilvy & Mather, in South Africa.

Vietnam, like Croatia, a former war zone, has benefited from an increase in tourists keen to travel long haul. Biggs says: “The country has always been wonderful, the only damage was covered over years ago. It is being visited by people who first travelled to Thailand 15 years ago and have visited all the resorts and want somewhere different.”

The tourist industry has had little support from the government, with investment in infrastructure such as hotels coming from overseas companies.

Fashion, infrastructure and unique attractions may all play a part in building up a tourist industry from scratch, but without marketing even longstanding holiday spots such as Spain will have difficulty in maintaining their share of the tourism market.