GOOD PRACTICE OF APPLYING THE CONCEPT OFCIRCULAR ECONOMY IN CULTURAL TOURISM

Do you know what diffused hotels are?

Get informed, because they are the future of sustainable tourism!

In recent years, mass industrial tourism has been strongly criticised as unsustainable, and new forms of tourism have emerged. Tourists themselves have changed over the years. The “new tourist” wants a personalised tourist experience, looks for authenticity, has a great interest in the environment, and sees holiday as an opportunity to improve knowledge of cultures and places. These requirements can be met very well by the construction of scattered hotels.

Scattered hotels have the following characteristics: 

• housing units located in several buildings close together

 near a town centre, or in a small village;

• common hotel reception where all accommodation units are

 managed from one point;

• the management structure most often organized by local

 self-government;

• a distance between living units and communal areas

contained to within 200 m;

• the presence of local crafts/services near the guests;
• the presence of an authentic environment;
• the presence of a living community.

The idea of a scattered hotel was developed in Italy in the early 1980s but is only recently more seriously implemented in practice. By introducing this form of integration of accommodation and hospitality capacities, Šibenik was the first city in Croatia to launch such an initiative. Unfortunately, due to strict regulation, cooperation problems, lack of communication, and relying on the more conventional offer of accommodation through intermediaries, scattered hotels are still very few in Croatia (e.g. Vela Vrata in Buzet and Ražnjevića Dvori in Polača).