ABSTRACT
The national level, both Croatia's recently adopted Strategy of Tourism Development of Croatia up to 2020 and the new Strategic Marketing Plan of Croatian Tourism emphasize seasonal and spatial distribution as their principal goals. Even though much of the recent destination development and marketing planning in Croatia deals with branding to some extent, often recommending further brand work, the implementation side of the process seems to be largely missing. At this point, destination branding in Croatia is for the most part strategy on paper. Destination branding is undoubtedly a challenging process for all destination stakeholders. Due to the inherent complexity of tourism destinations, it is a process which relies on consensus building and for which new management procedures and skills need to be developed focusing particularly on the competencies and responsibilities of tourist boards or destination marketing and management organizations. Increasing their capabilities is an area requiring further research and development.
