Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.22572/mi.27.2.4
The Impact Assessment of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Communication of Events in Croatian Tourism
Dejan Gluvačević
orcid.org/0000-0002-4960-648X
; Edward Bernays University College Communications Tourism, Zagreb, Croatia
Zvonimir Grgas
; doktorand na Sveučilištu Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku
Abstract
The example of the great crises shows the complexity of the modern world. The networking brought to us by globalization threatens to make every local problem global, but it has also opened up the possibility for us to unite the total potentials of humanity in solving common problems. Although the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic primarily mobilizes action to protect people’s lives and health, the crisis has strongly affected all segments of society and posed challenges to them that need to be addressed. Social and economic life has slowed considerably, and communication between people has largely moved into the digital space. The public health demand for limited mobility of people and the introduction of physical distance have particularly affected the tourism sector, which grew strongly on the wings of globalization until the pandemic. Tourism workers have a narrower scope of action during the crisis, but the experience gained can serve to strengthen resilience to future crises, as well as the development of new models of tourism business, with special emphasis on communication in tourism. The aim of this paper is to examine how tourist events in Croatia communicate to potential visitors in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. For the needs of the work, according to the criteria of the author, events in the area of Croatia that have a tourist character were selected, taking care of the even regional representation. Contextual differences between events do not affect the results obtained because the focus is on universal communication in tourism. In order to achieve key results, online questionnaire was conducted with representatives of event organizers in charge of communication. The authors of the paper divided the questionnaire according to the timeline into three parts. The first part concerned communication experiences in organizing the event that took place before the COVID-19 pandemic. The second part concerned communication related to the manifestation during the crisis. The last part of the questionnaire was predictive, ie it asked communication experts to predict communication models in organizing events in the post-pandemic period. Tourism seeks stability, but the crisis must be accepted as a challenge. Based on experience, it is necessary to construct estimates of future models of action, and the cooperation of scientists and practitioners in tourism is important.
Keywords
communication in tourism; tourism; COVID-19 pandemic; tourist manifestation
Hrčak ID:
267431
URI
Publication date:
20.12.2021.
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