DIFFUSE HOTELS AND AGRICULTURAL HOUSEHOLDS BUSINESS PRACTICE

The concept of a diffuse hotel is designed to connect small tourism providers in a specific small geographic area into a broader and more complete offer of tourist services. The model of diffuse hotels has been founded in Italy by Giancarlo dall'Ara in 1982 and has been accepted for providing accommodation facilities all over the world. Increasing the quality of private accommodation facilities or accommodation in households is one of the key objectives of the Development Strategy of Croatian Tourism till the 2020th. At the same time it is the reason for developing the National Programme what includes creation of new and innovative tourism products. All this actions lead to increasing demand in the rural areas in main season as well as out of peak seasons and strengthening of the competitiveness of Croatian tourism. The aim of the paper is to analyze some specific features of the diffuse hotels and to explore the possibility of improving the agricultural household tourist offer in Croatia by implementation of diffuse hotels. For the purpose of this paper, in 2015, the perception of agricultural households managers/owners in the area of Dubrovnik-Neretva County has been explored. According to the results of the research it is visible that diffuse hotels can be considered and accepted as suitable form of accommodation facilites in the future development of tourism in the area of Dubrovnik-Neretva County.