The Financial Potential of Gastronomy for Tourism Development in Croatia
This chapter examines the financial performance efficiency of the restaurant sector in Croatian counties over the period 2013–2017. Today's tourists are ambitious explorers who travel in order to find and explore new experiences and motives for travelling as long as there are interesting things, activities and offers which correspond to their preferences. Among the many motives that today's tourist decides to travel, gastronomic tourism certainty plays an important role. The observation period began in 2013, since that was the year when Croatia acceded to the European Union and joined all the other prominent European food destinations. In order to evaluate the financial performance efficiency, the methodology of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) was applied separately to the data processing of each year. The results of the Charnes–Cooper–Rhodes model showed that only four counties (Lika-Senj, Zadar, Istria and Dubrovnik-Neretva) achieved continuous efficiency over the whole observed period. In 2013 the results of scale efficiency showed that 10 counties (Krapina-Zagorje, Karlovac, Bjelovar-Bilogora, Lika-Senj, Požega-Slavonia, Zadar, Sibenik-Knin, Split-Dalmatia, Istria and Dubrovnik-Neretva) achieved a score of 1, and in later years there was a decrease. One of the main obstacles of the existing inefficiencies in the entire restaurant sector in Croatian counties is certainly changeable tax legislation and lack of employees in the restaurant sector.