Written by: Lovre Prančić
Student of the Tourism and Hospitality School, 3c
On Monday, December 12, 2022, students of the Split Tourism and Hospitality School visited Camp Biokovo as part of the Career for Green and Sustainable Tourism project. The goal was to learn about concrete examples of the application of sustainable tourism ideas in practice. You can read my observation on the visit in the article.
Sustainable tourism = tourism in harmony with nature
Sustainable tourism is a concept that unites ecology, economy and culture.
It has three goals, the most prominent of which is ecological: reducing the negative impact of tourism on the environment and sustainable and proper use of energy sources. The economic goal refers to the earnings of the local population with the purpose of investing the earned funds in the further development of instruments for achieving ecological and cultural goals. Culturology in this definition primarily refers to the development of the ecological awareness of the community.
Camp Biokovo
Camp Biokovo was founded in 2014 in Zagvozd. It is categorized as a three-star facility with eleven places for caravans and tents. It has two rooms, a kitchen with a dining room and a bathroom with a space for washing clothes by hand or with a washing machine. Most of the guests are Europeans, and to a lesser extent Americans, Australians and Japanese who are happy to share some advice for developing the camp in the framework of sustainable tourism.
Arrangement of Camp Biokovo
Waste is not waste until we throw it away. will.i.am
The guiding thread in the design of the camp was sustainability, the utilization of used things and their reuse.
– We didn’t have money to buy anything and, basically, that’s how my story with sustainable tourism started – said Mirjana Svaguša, the owner of the camp.
The camp is equipped by reusing things that were no longer useful to others, they were refined and arranged. Tables, chairs, refrigerators and boards that are used to make attractive armchairs and waste sorting bins are a real example of this. The old truck has been converted into a storage room for tillage tools, from which guests can pick organic products (potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots…) and thus taste the fruits of the Croatian soil.
The camp’s openness and closure are signaled by a flag on a pole (flag raised, i.e., open), a former part of the bell tower of the parish church in Zagvozd. During the renovation of the parish church, the fence was also supposed to be thrown, but its final address still became a camp.
The problem of the camp is noise pollution due to the proximity of the road and the barking of the neighbors’ dogs.
– We have a lot of noise pollution that we cannot prevent. Noise can be prevented by planting more trees, more plants, however, in the camp we try to keep everything as natural as possible, which means that we don’t have any poisons, that we don’t additionally pollute nature, so, in essence, we have a lot of problems with various insects and similar. As a natural noise protection, we used a laurel-cherry tree that was very tall. The rootworm is a worm that got into that laurel-cherry, so we had to remove it. Instead of that laurel-cherry, we built a wall that was not in the plan – explained the owner.
In addition to the mentioned wall and fence on one side, the other side is surrounded by various plants and trees, which of course are also found in other parts of the camp: oak trees, kostel, mulberry, Biokov fir, guard house, rosemary.
As can be concluded, the camp is truly based on the goals of sustainable tourism, surrounded by natural surroundings and atmosphere.
– This is a real “madness” place for socializing – concluded the owner.
