PhD M. Gregorić¹
PhD E.A. Blinova²
PhD E.A. Gureeva²
Karlo Kovačić^3
1University North, Koprivnik, Croatia
²Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, Moscow
³Faculty of Management, Tourism and Sports, Polytechnic University Medimurje, Cakovec, Croatia

Objective of the study was to determine the attractiveness of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia on the Croatian tourist market and identify the willingness of Croatian tourists to spend their own (personal) funds during the competitive period.
Methods and structure of the study. A comprehensive study of the attractiveness of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia for Croatian residents consisted of two parts conducted before and after the sports event. Prior to the 2018 FIFA World Cup, based on the specially designed questionnaires, the authors conducted a survey among the Croatian citizens who were potential visitors of the FIFA World Cup in Russia. The second part of the study consists in analyzing the flow of tourists from Croatia to Russia during the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The survey conducted prior to the sports event covered 291 random respondents from all over Croatia aged 14-65 years (the majority of the respondents were 20-25 years old, 81.4%), financially reliable population, including students (92.8%), and unemployed individuals (6.7% including 0.7% of pensioners).
Results and conclusions. The study found that running sports events increases the interest of potential visitors from Croatia in Russia as a tourist destination; and if the main motivating factor for Croatian residents to visit the 2018 FIFA World Cup was the possibility to support the national team, the importance of other motives was quite high: the possibility to visit other matches, acquaintance with the culture of Russia, sightseeing, etc. The study enabled to identify a significant share of accommodation facilities, traveler attractions in the structure of income received from Croatian fan tourists attending major sports events such as the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia. Based on the findings, the authors proposed using the FIFA-2018 heritage to maintain the image of the Russian Federation as an attractive tourist destination for potential visitors from Croatia and contribute to the inbound tourism growth.

Keywords: 2018 FIFA World Cup, football, Croatia, attractiveness of tourist destinations, Russian Federation, development of tourism, sports events, inbound tourism.

References

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