Importance of Promotion in the Development of Railway Traffic in Croatia

HŽ (Croatian Railways) is currently preparing for modernization of the railway traffic in Croatia that should partially relieve the road traffic in the future, and make the travel by railway even faster, and easier. Although, for the achievement of this goal, technical assumptions, and service improvements are most important, they are not sufficient. The authors consider the role of promotion as extremely important in this process, as well. In other words, it is necessary to improve the image of the railway traffic, and HŽ itself, so that the passengers would start to consider this kind of traffic as a high quality alternative to the road traffic, i.e. to increase their confidence in the railway traffic, and make the travel by railway more prestigious. This can be achieved through the development of HŽ brand, promotion of certain services, and the corporation itself, and further improvement of public relations. The authors base their observations on the research work they performed.