Without cash, but with a hope

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    The main office of tourism of Croatia defined the financial plans of the country’s promotion on the Russian market in 2006 and the scheme of joint advertisement with Russian tour operators. The total sum of expenses will be around $4 million. About $1 million of them is planned to be spent on showing of TV videos. A similar sum will be used for the joint advertisement of the destination with tour operators. The rest of the sum will be used for press-tours, advertising material, exhibitions, workshops etc.
   However, specialists doubt the intention to spend money on their promotion in Russia. ‘Someone certainly will be involved in the process, but there would not be a large flow of interested people so in the joint advertising campaign the Croatian party will cover only 17-20% of our expenses’, says Olga Voikina, director of the tourist department of ‘Regulus’. So tour companies do not expect a large support in advertising.
   However operators will not entirely refuse participation in such programs. A lot will depend on how the tourism office will handle the provided money. ‘Promo-tours and workshops do not take that much money, on the scale of 4 million it makes maximum of 1%. Even if you deduct expenses for TV advertising, the rest of the money is enough to compensate all expenses of tour operators’, says Kseniya Ogienko, director of tourism in UTE Megapolus group.
    Besides, market participants note that the general increase of expenditure on Croatian promotion, especially on television advertising can trigger an increase in demand for the destination. ‘It will positively influence the Croatian image’, says Sergey Prigolovkin, chairman of board of directors at ‘Company PAX’.