Memorial policies and restoration of Croatian tourism two decades after the war in former Yugoslavia

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since 2005, tourism in Croatia is growing exponentially, making the country a major tourist destination in Europe. Yet the 1991–1995 war that bloodied the Croatian territory has endangered the tourism sector. On the one hand, the fighting caused the demolition of many infrastructures and the destruction of part of the local architectural heritage. On the other hand, the media coverage of the war and extreme violence of ethnic cleansing campaigns frightened international customers, who fled the destination. Therefore, actors of tourism promotion have worked, since the end of the war to overshadow the conflict by transforming the image of Croatia in the international arena, focusing on its belonging to the Mediterranean area and on the originality of the destination. This marketing strategy has been accompanied by an invisibiliza tion of the war, in places dedicated to tourism in order to promote an idyllic image of the destination. Nevertheless, this concealment is not symptomatic of the place of the memory of war in contemporary Croatian society. Instead, the memory is ubiquitous in the Croatian public space. It participates in the redefinition of the post-Yugoslav national identity and ethnic boundaries, it articulates with the memory of W orld W ar II, and represents a political lever that various political factions and civil society actors are competing for.