Abstract:

Tourism’s progressive trajectory, on the path of not just recovery from COVID-19 pandemic but also of its continuous development in the recent decade, strengthens the need for rethinking and redesigning tourism in order to influence its direction, nature, quality and overall impact on the people and the planet towards a positive, balanced and sustainable future outcome. Having this in mind, the purpose of the paper was to analyse and evaluate the current state of tourism in Croatia, through elaboration of findings from a desk research of Croatia’s tourism characteristics, and primary research of tourism perception of Croatia conducted via survey. Finally, the aim of the paper is to showcase a successful example of materialising efforts of four European Union Member States and 25 of their organisations overall, in developing an innovative approach to human-nature interactions and impacts of tourist activities that will also be implemented in Croatia. Namely, the EU project “Human-Nature Interactions and Impacts of Tourist Activities on Protected Areas – HUMANITA” co-financed within Interreg Central Europe 2021-2027 programme will aim at enhancing the protection of natural heritage, ecosystems and valuable areas, producing innovative solutions to assess the impact of tourist activities on nature, and supporting positive human-nature relationships for transformative change.