MEMORIAL TOURISM IN CROATIA? A CASE STUDY OF VUKOVAR: ATTITUDES OF LOCAL POPULATION

Abstract

Croatian tourism supply is mainly based on Sun&Sea tourism on the attractive coast and islands. However, in recent years there has been increased competition and the tourists’ demands that have contributed to development of alternative forms of tourism, also in continental part of Croatia. The city of Vukovar, as the battlefield of one of the largest battles in Europe after the World War II, after its peaceful reintegration in the Croatian territory (1997), became the Croatian national memorial place. Even though tourism is not among the leading economy branches in Vukovar, due to its recent past, memorial tourism based on memorial sites from the Croatian Homeland War (1991-1995) could be developed. Memorial tourism is a form of cultural tourism with a supply based on memorial sites - places of important events, in this case the places of suffering and tragedies. As main research objectives can be pointed out: a) the analysis of the characteristics of tourist flow and accommodation facilities in Vukovar after the end of the Croatian Homeland War and its reintegration into the Croatian territory and b) analysis of the Vukovar local population’ attitudes on the possibilities of the development of memorial tourism based on heritage from the Croatian Homeland War. The local population attitudes were detected by a direct questionnaire survey at several locations in the center of Vukovar. In addition to descriptive statistics, statistical analyses were conducted to determine the differences in the respondents’ attitudes (the dependent variable) with regard to gender, average age, level of education and nationality (independent variables). Total of eight statistically significant differences were found using standard statistical methods in SPSS program: chi-square test and t-test.