3. OPTIMIZATION OF TRANSPORT AND TOURISM IN THE ADRIATIC
REGION
The Adriatic region is well known for highly developed tourism. The majority of
emitive market is concentrated in Middle Europe in highly industrialised countries such as
Germany, Austria and Italy, and in a group of transitional countries such as Slovenia, Czech
Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.
Relatively small distance till emitive market points out a need for high level of
integrity between regional and European transport system. In this case it is not only a
harmonization of technical and technological standards of transport systems, but also a
physical connection and therefore a harmonization of transport systems on all levels is
indispensable.
There are three aspects of integration that have to be pointed out:
• technical characteristics of transport infrastructure in the region have to be
harmonised with the EU transport infrastructure;
• quality of transport service on the regional territory has to be in accordance with the
quality of transport service in EU;
• ecological and safety standards in the region have to be harmonised with those on
EU territory.
Inhabitants of EU are used to modern transport infrastructure that enables high quality
service and simple organization transport process organization, as well as easy accessibility of
any destination with relatively small effort. When they start to plan the vacation they expect at
least such transport conditions on which they are used in their living place, or they will chose
another destination that is approachable by modern transport infrastructure.
The quality of transport service depends on infrastructure quality but also on
characteristics of transportation means such as comfort, speed, safety and low price. Tourists
will usually give preference to those destinations that are approachable by transport modes of
such characteristics.
The ecology and safety level, compared with former two characteristics, is by no
means considered to be that factor that will have predominant influence when choosing a
tourism destination. Ecology and safety standards are not easily noticed as the factors
mentioned earlier. Their influence is on a long-term level, and leads to minimization of
market attractiveness of tourism destination because of nature devastation and lower safety.
4.1. Interdependence of Transport and Tourism-Example of Croatia
Croatian economy is based on tourism and transport. Although as a tourism
destination it is accessible by all transportation branches, their capacities are fare from being
used uniformly.