DEVELOPMENT OF TOURIST DEMAND IN CORRELATION WITH CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE REPUBLIC OF CROATIA

The Republic of Croatia is a traditionally tourism-oriented country, and the growth of tourist traffic in recent years shows that tourism is one of the major engines of economic development. The biggest touristic demand is for coastal destinations in summer time. Climate change, however, may affect the Croatian tourism through direct effects – some destinations will no longer be able to meet the needs of tourists; and through indirect effects – associated with the environment and the ecosystem. However, the significance of these effects might depend on the intensity of climate change. For this
reason, it is very important to study in what way climate change could affect the economic importance of tourism in Croatia. Via the regression model and exponential regression analysis, using one dependent variable (number of tourists) and one independent variable (temperature), the paper analyses the impact of temperature rise on the number of future tourists until 2025. As can be concluded from this work, by 2025, the temperature rise will have
a positive effect on tourism in the coastal and mountainous part of Croatia, and no significant effect on the number of tourists in Zagreb.