Croatian island Hvar to crack down on drunken tourists

While still fairly serene during the day, the town can become a swarm of public drunkenness, partial nudity and endless din late into the night. Eight years ago, there were no youth hostels on the island, said Paul Bradbury, a British expat who founded Total Croatia News, an English-language news site. Today, there are more than 30.

"There used to be art galleries along the pier," Bradbury said. "Now, it's all bars."

There is still high-end tourism as well. In the next year, three hotels are scheduled to open on Hvar — all five-star resorts, the island's first. Events like Ultra Europe, a music festival in nearby Split that holds its "after parties" on Hvar, keep the archipelago teeming through the hot months.

Hoping to keep it that way, the mayor and local business owners came up with this summer's campaign to alert visitors that the town would be taking a harder line on enforcing its public behaviour statutes than in the past.

Novak, 47, said the campaign, which was rolled out slowly in late June, would focus at first on spreading the word about the renewed enforcement, with only egregious violators who refuse to heed police warnings being fined. So far, the police have been able to maintain order with the warnings, said George Buj, a member of the Hvar Tourism Board, and no one has been fined.

"The police say they're making fewer interventions and seeing fewer incidents during the day," Buj said. "There are still individuals, especially in the evening and night time, but over all there's a noticeable difference."

Hvar is not the only European vacation mecca to be having second thoughts about the huge wave of hedonistic revellers unleashed by bargain airlines. Venice has limited the number of cruise ships. In Barcelona, the mayor has allowed La Boqueria, the city's famous food market, to forbid large tour groups, which clog its narrow aisles.

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But the crowds continue to grow, perhaps in part because terrorist attacks have made some vacationers shy away from formerly popular resorts in North Africa or the Middle East. Recent waves of refugees have also made some European travellers wary of resorts in Greece and Italy.

"Because of our neighbors' troubles, tourists are coming here instead," said Eduard Andric, 66, president of the Tourism and Services Union of Croatia. "Last year was a record-breaker, and this year promises to be one, too."

Croatia's national economy has become overwhelmingly dependent on tourism. Too dependent, some believe.

Ljubo Jurcic, president of the Croatian Association of Economists, said that, ideally, tourism should account for about 10 per cent of the nation's gross domestic product. Instead, recent estimates put it around 18 percent, which Jurcic said is a sign of the weakness of other segments of the economy, like manufacturing.

In the modern competition for tourists, Croatia started out behind its Mediterranean neighbours, because of the collapse of communism and the violent dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. But by the 1999 opening of Carpe Diem, Hvar's first upscale night spot with its own private beach, tourism was already beginning to assume a dominant role in the country's economy.

Carpe Diem was "initially high class," Bradbury said. But as other clubs opened, spreading into the town and transforming once-peaceful cafes into techno-thumping nuisances, the crowds became increasingly younger and rowdier.

Instead of Jackie O casting an elegant shadow across the deck of her yacht, there was Yacht Week, in which several hundred visitors, mostly young people, drink their way down the Dalmatian Coast, putting into Hvar three times a week.

"They arrive at 5 p.m., 300 or 400 people who have already been drinking all day," Bradbury lamented. "They drink some more in Hvar and then wander around the village. There are bodies just everywhere. And then, at midnight, they get on the boat and go to Carpe Diem or one of the other nightclubs."

Katia Zaninovic Dawnay, 57, works for a real estate firm and said it had become unpleasant in the summer to wander the old town and step over the recumbent bodies.

"Nobody wants to wake up and find that your doorway has been pissed on, excuse my English," Dawnay said. "Or even worse."

Tourists have been coming to Hvar since the creation of the Hygenic Association of Hvar in 1868 spurred a rapid rise in hotels, restaurants and other tourist facilities. But it has taken more than a century for the island to recognise that perhaps not all forms of tourism are equal.

"The idea isn't to have so many people," Dawnay said. "The idea is to have fewer people who spend more money."

Many of the hostels and most of the restaurants and cafes have joined the crusade to improve behaviour on the island.

Senka Halebic, 31, the spokeswoman for Hula Hula, one of the most popular beach clubs, said she has seen an improvement since the mayor's campaign began.

"This new generation that's coming in, who come to rollick, who come to drink cheap alcohol, we don't want that type of clientele," she said.

"When someone comes to Hvar, they expect a cultured, quality town," Halebic said. "These folks sleep in hostels, drink alcohol out of bottles around town. Some exclusive guest in his large yacht doesn't want to see young drunks sleeping on the pier in the morning."

The New York Times

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