Public-private partnership: a model for sustainable tourism development in Regional park Mura-Drava – the possibilty of tourist valorisation of abandoned army barracks

In many Strategic documents (Strategy of Croatian Tourism Development from 2003. to 2010.; Main plan and Strategy of Croatian Tourism until 2020.) The role of selective forms of tourism in Croatian continental area was emphasized as one of Croatian priorities, although its development has not yet reached those proportions as it expected to have. Slow development of Croatian rural tourism lays in many reasons, among other things there are inefficiency of destination management, low size of investments in touristic infrastructure, a lack of accommodation and insufficient education in tourist and accommodation business. In this paper the authors try to point out the positive role of new declared Regional Park Mura-Drava and its role in sustainable tourist development as it might have. The survey which was conducted with directors of County Tourist Boards in whose territory The Park was declare is used for the current status analysis of touristic offer and development of destination management. The authors emphasize the possibilities of many different kinds of local co-operation and public-private partnerships with the aim of tourist development in the observed area. Among other things, this paper describes a case-study of local co-operation in Municipality of Pitomaca. The goal of this partnership is to develop a reference center for organic agriculture and sustainable tourism in the abandoned barracks nearby Hungarian border, now in Regional Park area of protection. This example tries to point to the possibility of using various forms of co-operation and the local public-private partnership to encourage faster development of tourism in natural protected area of The Regional Park Mura - Drava.