Tourism Cluster - Promoter Of Rural Development If Croatia

Tourism, as one of the greatest phenomena of the 21 century, is characterised by an intense competition in the global tourist market, because of the growing tourist demand in the last couple of decades. The competition between tourist destinations, regardless of what kind of tourism products and services they provide requires tourism product providers to adapt their offer to the preferences and requirements of “modern” tourist consumers, which has resulted in the development of new, selective forms of tourism. One of them is rural tourism which has experienced continued growth in the global market. If one takes an objective look at the actual position of rural tourism in the overall tourism industry of Croatia, it is evident that it is not assigned an adequate level of importance. The basic reason is certainly the focus of national tourism policy exclusively on the development of the seaside tourism, which has lead to a disorganized (random) development of rural tourism. Specifically, there was no networking and cooperation between tourism stakeholders in rural areas. Clusters are one of the methods for structuring rural tourism, since they are built on vertical and horizontal networking and strategic partnerships. The existing knowledge on the issue will be presented in the theoretical part of this paper by describing empirical evidence obtained by Croatian academic community in the field of clusters in rural tourism. The empirical part of the paper is focused on the analysis of the benefits brought by clusters or common interest groups. For this purpose, empirical research will be carried out on rural tourism providers (TFF1 owners) in the selected counties of Continental and Adriatic Croatia.