Cultural Heritage, Tourism and the UN Sustainable Development Goals: The Case of Croatia

The chapter analyses the quality of managing cultural heritage sites in Croatia, particularly those inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage List, which are under growing pressure of overtourism. The analysis was performed by using qualitative and quantitative data on visitors of the UNESCO heritage and the most important impacts of tourism on destination areas, compared to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) focused on tourism and heritage. The study investigates the state of safeguarding, protecting and valorizing cultural heritage in relevant documents and in practice, focusing on Dubrovnik as a case study area. The analysis revealed the insufficient plans for managing UNESCO World Heritage Sites in relevant documents and in the field, as well as lack of monitoring of tourism impacts. The selected cases in Croatia confirmed that the most common way for heritage valorization is within the framework of tourism (McKercher and du Cros, Cultural tourism. The partnership between tourism and cultural heritage management, Routledge, New York/London, 2009), where heritage is most often associated with sustainable tourism. However, desirable regenerative tourism, that repairs the harm that has already been done, is still far from the present situation and it will require much effort in its planning, designing tools for its implementation and its management to achieve it in the near future.