Dubrovnik: tourism before and after the COVID 19 outbreak

Since ‘’overtourism’’ changed social, environmental and economic picture of the City, ‘’Respect the City’’ concept was designed in order to regulate where Dubrovnik wants to go and how it’s going to achieve and maintain its sustainable development. In the meantime, Dubrovnik development agency DURA joined ‘’Tourism friendly Cities’’ URBACT network in order to produce the ‘’Action plan’’ which is in line with Respect the City concept and address the issues related to ‘’overtoursim’’

For the purpose of participatory approach, the ULG group was formed consisting representatives of various institutions and the initial meeting happened during the project’s first phase in January 2020. At that point, no one knew what will happen and how the pandemics will cause the world lockdown in couple of months. All of the planned activities and topics discussed then were based on the previous tourist trends and experience, but of course, in Spring 2020, things completely changed and tourist season was almost fully cancelled. During July and August, Dubrovnik had app.30% of visitors in comparison to 2019, and it is expected that the results for the entire 2020 will reach app. 20% of 2019 results.

All of the mentioned above changed the course of project activities, thus the second meeting of ULG group was organized on July 28th 2020. Natasa Miric, project manager and Alisa Aliti Vlasic ULG coordinator informed participants with all updates and following changes in the project implementation, presented timeframe and started the activities of defining the relevant indicators for local sustainable development. New meetings with IAP roadmap definition for the ULG group are planned in October when it is expected that participants start actively develop draft of the Action plan.

Natasa Miric, project manager and Alisa Aliti Vlasic ULG coordinator, city of Dubrovnik