CROATIA AS A TOURIST DESTINATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF TOURISTS FROM SERBIA

Armed conflicts during the 1990s led to the breakup of Yugoslavia and subsequent deterioration of relations between Yugoslav nations, particularly Serbs and Croats. Twentyodd years later, the situation is greatly improved and tourism is regarded as an important factor for promoting peace in both countries. In the recent years, Croatia has been making great efforts through its tourism development strategy to remind Serbian tourists of the charm and beauty of the Croatian coast. In this article, the authors present the results of a survey conducted from December 2012 to March 2014 involving 850 residents from Serbia. The aim of the research was to determine how satisfied Serbian tourists are with Croatia as a tourist destination. The results of factor analysis single out five dimensions of visitor satisfaction of Serbian respondents: ‘Tourist infrastructure’, ‘Services’, ‘Coast maintenance’, ‘Safety’ and ‘Communications’. Authors point out that the general attitude towards Croatia can be explained through ‘Coastal maintenance’ as the most dominant factor. Destinations which visitors from Serbia choose as the most attractive and the safest are coastal places in the northwest part of Croatia (Istra), whereas inland Croatia and southern parts of the Croatian coastline are still not singled out as potential tourist destinations. Regardless of the above, this research shows that tourism may play a part in the development of peaceful relations between the two nations.


Introduction
Tourism is one of the most important industries in the Republic of Croatia.Directly or indirectly, it accounts for approx.22% of the GDP (gross domestic product) and over 40% of total export, which inevitably ranks it among the key components of the national economy and foreign trade.Croatia has exceptionally diverse and well preserved natural and cultural tourism potential.The Adriatic Sea and the coastline hold the greatest tourism potential in Croatia.Unique characteristics of the seawater (crystal clear and clean) and relatively sparsely populated shores (the length of the coastline is approx.1,800 km with more than 1,000 islands, of which only 66 are populated), together with mild climate, are all well-known landmarks which are used as the main comparative advantage of Croatian tourism 1 .
The year 2012 was a very good year for Croatian tourism, despite the challenges of the global economy and the crisis of the Euro.According to the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, in 2012 the number of tourist arrivals increased by 3.3% and the number of tourist nights by 4.0%, relative to 2011.Tourists realized 62,743,463 tourist nights; 8.3% by domestic and 91.7% by foreign visitors mostly from Germany, Slovenia, Austria, the Czech Republic, and Italy.This rate of growth in Croatia and Mediterranean Europe is partly a consequence of traffic shifts from the Middle East and North Africa.Furthermore, Croatia also profited from improved outbound flows from markets such as Scandinavia, Germany and the Russian Federation 2 .
Pursuant to the data from the Croatian Ministry of Tourism, 77,000 of Serbian tourists visited Croatia in 2007.The following year, the number of visits increased to 83,633, while the number of tourist nights reached 385,093, i.e. 70,000 more than in 2007.According to these data, Serbia is, along with Japan, the country with the highest rate of visits to Croatia comparing to the previous period.In the opinion of Serbian respondents, Croatia's biggest advantage in tourism development is the beauty of the coast and cultural heritage 3 .however, comparing to other tourist destinations, travel agencies have a different experience of holiday demands in Croatia.Most of them agree that there is an interest, but in comparison with the favourite, traditional destinations such as Greece, Turkey or Egypt, Croatia is not competitive.According to certain daily newspapers, although Croatia is represented in terms of marketing (with slogans 'have a holiday where your parents used to have' or 'So beautiful, so near'), there is no great interest in this destination, primarily due to the prices which are higher than those in Greece or Bulgaria 4,5 .Nevertheless, it can be said that Serbian tourists' interest in spending holidays in Croatia has been consistent during the recent years.According to the data of the National Association of Tourist Agencies (YUTA), approx.3,500 of Serbian tourists visited Croatia in 2013 (under package tours).There are no precise and reliable estimations of the number of tourists who visited Croatia by themselves, under their own arrangement, but the fact is that that this number is constantly increasing 6 .

Literature review
Visitor satisfaction has become an important factor in destination management because it is a reliable means of estimating the overall performance.Good comprehension of the level of visitor satisfaction results in beneficial self-service, an activity which focuses on tourism profit, and so do government institutions and private investors whose interest is development of high-quality tourism infrastructure 7 .
There are four groups which affect the choice and decision about a trip: 1) Internal variables (attitudes, values, lifestyle, images, motivation, beliefs and intentions, personal characteristics of a tourist, a phase in life, etc.); 2) External variables (limitations, pull factors of a destination, marketing mix, influence of a family and peer groups, culture and subculture, social class, etc.); 3) The nature of the intended trip (distance to a destination, weather conditions, duration of a trip) and 4) Trip experience (mood and feelings during a trip, later evaluations).
The best destination choice depends on the mutual interaction of all these variables 8 .
In accordance with the theory of customers' behaviour in tourism, visitor satisfaction is the final phase in deciding on a destination, actually a part of rating after the purchase.Increased tourist satisfaction results in the desire to return Sirakaya ercan, woodside, g. arch (2005): Building and testing theories of decision making by travellers, Tourism Management 26, 815-832.to that destination i.e. it inspires loyalty and advertises a destination by word of mouth, which is one of the most important means of attracting new tourists 9 .
Research on the visitor satisfaction is one of the most important methods for collecting information on tourist destinations.Tribe & Snaith (2008) suggested the model of assessing visitor satisfaction with a destination, which they called hOLSAT (holiday satisfaction) 10 .The key characteristic of the hOLSAT model is its capacity to assess visitor satisfaction with a destination rather than a specific service (e.g.hotel service).Also, this model does not use a fixed group of attributes that are common to all destinations.Instead, it allows the use of attributes that are the most appropriate for the observed destination.The model allows tourists to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction by evaluating both positive and negative attributes 11 .
Understanding of visitor satisfaction and visitors' experience of a destination are very important to managers in order to improve products and services, and do effective promotion on the market12 .Visitor satisfaction can be expressed through the cross-culture perspective, since different cultural values may influence visitors of various cultural backgrounds to experience the provided services and their quality in many different ways.Tourists from different countries put emphasis on different services, such as safety, hygiene, entertainment, staff appearance etc.The guarantee of personal safety is maybe the most important precondition when choosing a destination.Acts of terrorism, crime, natural disasters, and epidemics have negative influence on the image of a destination and represent a big challenge in tourism industry, especially because such safety fears grow with media exposure13 ,14 .Furthermore, the image of a destination itself has a positive or negative influence on the perception of quality and satisfaction.Positive impression resulting from positive experience will lead to said destination receiving a high rating.Destination image is connected with tourists' behaviour.The better the image, the greater the likelihood of tourists returning to the same place.Political impact on tourism trends is strong and multiple: as a means of economic sanctions or embargo; restrictions in tourism industry and tourist activity in order to prevent multinational corporations influencing the local residents; hiding historic events considered to be inappropriate or in some other way politically inadequate, which leads to complete exclusion of certain destinations from tourist product of a country; tourist propaganda of certain countries may be aimed at glorifying certain political ideologies; domestic tourism, especially cultural heritage, is used to build nationalism and patriotism within a country, which is probably one of the most frequent political uses of tourism worldwide15 .

Data collection
A survey was conducted on the territory of five cities in the Republic of Serbia (Belgrade, Novi Sad, Subotica, Niš, and Kragujevac) from December 2012 to March 2014.The main survey was preceded by a pilot survey (N=82) carried out in November 2012.Novi Sad and Subotica are situated in the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in the north of Serbia.Belgrade is the administrative, political and cultural centre of Serbia, located 190 km south of Subotica and 90 km south of Novi Sad.Kragujevac (140 km south of Belgrade) is situated in the central part and Niš (240 km south of Belgrade) in the south of Serbia16 .All five cities are university centres and residents of smaller nearby places gravitate towards them.
Five researchers participated in the survey, which included residents who visited the Croatian coast at least once.An average time to fill in the questionnaire was ten minutes.A total of 850 valid responses were collected.The sample included 44.8% males and 55.2% females among the respondents (Table 1).The two biggest age groups were 41-50 and 21-30, which represented 24.7% and 22.1% of the respondents, respectively.Most of the respondents (58.6%) had completed secondary education.Regarding their occupation, the majority of respondents were employed (53.4%).As for income, the dominant group was the low-income group, with respondents whose monthly income is under €300 (29.9%).

Questionnaire design
The questionnaire used in the survey was based on the review of relevant literature 17 , 18 , 19 and adjusted to the particular research and specific relations between the two nations during the last 25 years.Thirty items were added to the questionnaire based on the literature review and opinions of five members of the focus group (university professors of history and tourism).According to the results of the pilot research (N=82), eight questions were excluded from the questionnaire due to their low loading factor scores.The redesigned questionnaire contained 22 questions on attitudes of Serbian tourists towards Croatia as a tourist destination.There was one additional question, which would reflect the general attitude of respondents towards Croatia ('Croatia is the country I would gladly visit').Since the Croatian coast is the most attractive and the most visited part of Croatia, the authors focused their research on the attitudes towards the Croatian coast.According to data of the Ministry of Tourism of the Republic of Croatia, 84% of all tourist visits in 2013 were to the coastal places 20 .The questionnaire was structured using satisfaction items based on a seven-point Likert's scale.The structure of the scale was based on the following categories: terrible (1), unhappy (2), mostly unsatisfied (3), neither satisfied nor unsatisfied (4), mostly satisfied (5), pleased (6) and delighted (7).The last question in the questionnaire was a gap-filling one, regarding favourite destination on the Croatian coast.

Results
The data were factor analysed using the principal component method and varimax rotation procedure in order to extract the sub-dimensions.The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) overall measure of sampling adequacy was 0.874 and Bartlett's test of sphericity was significant (p = 0.000).These results showed that the set of items is suitable for factor analysis 21 .All factors with eigenvalue greater than 1 and with factor loadings exceeding 0.5 were retained.The results of the factor analysis, which suggested a five-factor solution, included 22 attributes and explained 67.47 % of the variance.The results of the factor analysis produced a clean factor structure with 17 Kim S. Samuel, Prideaux Bruce (2006): "An investigation of the relationship between South Korean domestic public opinion, tourism development in North Korea and a role for tourism in promoting peace on the Korean peninsula'', Tourism Management 27, 124-137.high loadings on the appropriate factors.Most variables loaded heavily on one factor and this indicated that there was minimal overlap among factors and that all factors were independently structured.Cronbach's α values for each factor were greater than 0.7.The results showed that the Alpha coefficients of the seven factors ranged from 0.796 to 0.890.This demonstrates that the scales of the formal questionnaire have considerable reliability 22 .Table 2 shows the results of the factor analysis.The first factor was labelled 'Tourist infrastructure'.This factor explained 32.161% of the total variance with a reliability coefficient of 0.875.The second factor was 'Services' explaining 14.034% of the total variance with a reliability coefficient of 0.833.The third factor was labelled 'Coast maintenance' and explained 8.997% of the variance with a reliability coefficient of 0.864.The fourth factor, labelled 'Safety' accounted for 6.708% of the variance with a reliability coefficient of 0.890.The fifth dimension 'Communications', accounted for 5.570% of the variance with a reliability coefficient of 0.796.Results of the descriptive statistical analysis presented in Table 3 show that respondents are mostly satisfied with the attributes referring to beauty and maintenance of the Croatian coast ( Χ =5,45;σ = 1,21).The Croatian coast offers not only clear and clean sea water but also a number of various beaches cowered with dense Mediterranean vegetation.Another highly rated factor is tourist infrastructure ( Χ =5.23;σ = 1.06).Croatia has a modern network of motorways throughout the whole country.They are mostly directed north-south, connecting the Adriatic coast with large cities in the north of the country and farther on to central and west Europe.Also, the hospitality industry in this country is very well developed, with quality hotel capacities and restaurants with a wide range of dishes.Croatia has five cultural heritage sites (historical complex Split and Diocletian's Palace, The old town of Dubrovnik, Euphrasian Basilica in Poreč, historical Town of Trogir and St. Jacob's Cathedral in šibenik) and two nature reserves (National Park Plitvice and Starogradsko polje hvar), all under the protection of UNESCO.The lowest rated factor is communication ( Χ =3.27; σ = 1.57), namely social contacts and communication between local people and tourists.More than two decades after the armed conflicts, people still reluctantly speak about the topics connected with the breakup of Yugoslavia, but also some other matters such as economy and political situation in the region.
The question referring to the favourite destination on the Croatian coast and the reason why people chose it gave some interesting results.Approx.79.2% of respondents answered this question by choosing places in Istra, the northernmost part of the Croatian coast (Rovinj, Pula, Umag, Poreč, and Rijeka).The most frequent motive for such choice was that respondents felt safe in this part of Croatia (35.3%) and that they enjoyed the unspoiled nature (30.7%).According to a daily newspaper, the fact that residents of Serbia (in view of the Croatian coast) mostly opt for Istra was also published in a newspaper article stating that Serbs are coming back to Istra and that Pula and Rovinj remained their favourite summer holiday destinations 23 .
Standard (simultaneous) multiple regression was used to rate the possibility to predict overall visitor satisfaction.Regression analyses were used to determine connections where one phenomenon (independent variable or cause) influences the other one (dependent variable or consequence).The question used to express respondents' attitude towards Croatia ( Χ = 4.71; σ = 1.34) is marked as a dependent variable.Factors which determine visitor satisfaction with Croatia as a tourist destination (tourist infrastructure, services, maintenance of the coast, safety, and communication) are marked as independent variables.The model as a whole explains 45.1% of total variance (Sig.= .000).It can be concluded from the column Beta that the major percentage (52.4%) of variation of dependent variable (general attitude towards Croatia) can be explained (predicted) by the 'coastal maintenance' dimension.Furthermore, a certain percentage of variation of dependent variable can be explained by the 'services' dimension (15.7%).The 'safety' dimension explains only 9.1% of dependent variable.
The proportion of dimensions 'tourist infrastructure' and 'communication' is small and not statistically significant (Sig.> 0.05).For all intents and purposes, this information shows that the beauty of the Croatian coast is the most dominant factor by which the attitude of the Serbian respondents towards Croatia as a tourist destination can be predicted.

Conclusion
whether the new Balkan countries will efficiently overcome their histories of violence and manage to establish successful and sustainable tourism development mostly depends on the level at which all participants are completely and cooperatively involved in the process of destination branding.This is still a complex economic and political problem for societies in transition 24 .
Results of the research conducted by Kim & Prideaux (2003, 2006) show that tourism does have a part in reducing tension by increasing opportunities for mutual contacts between people of the countries at war 25 , 26 .Although results of this survey were not aimed at determining the influence of tourism on improving the relations between the two nations (Serbs and Croats), results of regression analysis show that the beauty of the Croatian coast is strongly represented in explaining the general attitude of Serbian respondents towards Croatia as a destination.This proves that the appeal of the Croatian coast, as well as the nostalgic feeling connected with it, have contributed to the return of Serbian tourists.The results of this survey are significant from three perspectives.Firstly, there has been no research into the attitudes of Serbian tourists towards Croatia as a destination until now.Secondly, a reliable model was set (Cronbach's α values for each factor were greater than 0.7) to assess visitor satisfaction with destinations of sun & sand tourism, and it is appropriate for observing similar examples of post-war relations between the two nations.Thirdly, results of this research have shown that tourism plays a part in the development of peaceful relations between hostile nations and that tourism values of a destination may influence the returning of tourists who evoke pleasant memories of that destination.
Limitations of this study are connected with an impossibility of continuous observation of statistical data referring to the number of Serbian tourists in the post-war times.One of the problems is that the official statistics does not keep records of unregistered private accommodations which are a dominant type of accommodation for Serbian tourists.
The authors of the paper believe that the results of this research would be more indicative if there is feedback on the attitude the local population in Croatia has towards the Serbian tourists.The future research of these authors will be aimed at setting an adequate model which will address this problem.It has also been noticed that there is a need to keep accurate records of the ways in which the two nations perceive tourism, which will be realized through longitudinal research.Bilateral aspects of international tourism industry are becoming more and more important and thus require more attention than before.

Table 3 .
Mean ratings of factors and items

Table 4 .
Favourite tourist destinations in Croatia selected by potential tourists from Serbia

Table 5 .
Main reasons for the choice

Table 6 .
Model of the predictive effect that the satisfaction factors regarding Croatia as a tourist destination have on respondents' general attitude towards Croatia

Table 7 .
Regression quotients of the Model of the predictive effect that the satisfaction factors regarding Croatia as a tourist destination have on respondents' general attitude towards Croatia