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If Monty Python were looking for inspiration for a new script today, it would be enough to send the crew to some Croatian city beaches in the middle of the season.
Empty deck chairs that provide shade for hours, towels that become public space reservations overnight, and officials who are surprised by the same problem every summer.
It's hard to tell where comedy ends and destination management begins. British tourists are probably no longer sure whether they're watching a new episode of cult British humor or the reality of Croatian tourism. They turn around and look to see if they're being filmed by a hidden camera.
Every summer we see the exact same scenario. Guests get annoyed, fights break out, the media publishes the same photos as last year, social media is on fire again, and cities are mostly silent. Until next summer.
What fascinates me most is not the fact that it's happening. What fascinates me is that it's happening year after year.
Not because there is no law. Not because it is not clear what is allowed and what is not. But because many cities are clearly unable to enforce the rules on a few hundred meters of their own beach. And interestingly, they primarily live off tourism and tourists.
And that's exactly why this story has nothing to do with towels or deck chairs. It's a prime example of how seriously we take destination management. I've even exaggerated how seriously we take tourism. We take it so lightly that it's unbelievable to someone from the outside, especially for a modern European country like Croatia, which hasn't been in tourism since yesterday.
For years, we have been writing about destination management, visitor management, sustainability, DMMO models, data analysis, carrying capacities, digital platforms, strategic planning, governance... Conferences are organized, strategies are developed, action plans are adopted, and the future of tourism is discussed.
And then Terten comes and shows that a large number of destinations are not capable of solving a problem that can literally be seen with the naked eye. And which is banal, and does enormous damage to the destination, and thus to our entire tourism brand.
If we cannot ensure that a public beach remains public, how will we manage millions of tourist movements, traffic, housing, the quality of life of local residents, or climate change?
This is not a tourism issue. This is a management issue. Or even common sense.
The most absurd thing of all is that this is not a legal problem at all.
Towels are not a problem. Empty sun loungers are not a problem. The problem is destinations that allow the same scenario to repeat itself year after year.
Because every destination knows where it happens. It knows who manages the beach. It knows who rents out the loungers. It knows who is responsible for monitoring. The law is clear. Destinations have the tools.
If the same problem repeats itself for ten years, then it is no longer an incident.
That's the way of governing. In our case, absurd.
And it is on such "small" things that the guest forms an opinion about the destination. Not based on the slogan of the tourist board, the promotional video or the awards the destination wins. But based on my own experience.
Destination management is not what is written in the strategy. Destination management is what the guest experiences when he comes to the beach at eight in the morning. If he then sees dozens of empty deckchairs occupying public space or towels that overnight became a private reservation on a part of the beach, the message is very clear.
It wasn't the law that failed. It was the governance that failed.
And so before we reopen the discussion about destination digital twins, predictive analytics, or smart solutions, perhaps we should address something much simpler.
To show that the city can to manage one's own beach.
If this were a Monty Python sketch, we would all be laughing. The problem is that it isn't. This is the reality of some Croatian cities every summer. And to make the absurdity even greater, let me emphasize once again that destinations on the Adriatic coast live exclusively from tourism.
How to justify it to tourists or the global professional tourist public? I really don't know. I have no logical or any explanation. And it is even more difficult to explain why the same problem has been repeated for years.
The absurdity is even greater when certain cities and municipalities, under the guise of replenishing the beaches, bring soil, broken stone and other material to them, destroying the very natural resource they live on.
