The Croatian Littoral has been the most important tourist destination for tourists from Slovenia for decades. The coastal areas of Istria, Kvarner, and Dalmatia, including the Adriatic islands, became widely popular among Slovenes in the period of intense tourism development in the once common state of Yugoslavia. Today Croatia is the destination of as many as 60% of all private trips from Slovenia. In the introduction the affinity of Slovene tourists for travel abroad is supplemented with statistical data on their visits to the Republic of Croatia. In the next sections special emphasis is placed on the number of Slovene tourists and overnight stays, their average length of stay and spatial distribution in the Croatian Littoral in 2007. These data are then compared to those from 1999. The central section of the article consists of a detailed analysis of the content of the internet tourism offer of Slovene travel agencies as presented on their websites. The objects of the analysis were the structure of advertised destinations in the Croatian Littoral across counties and the structure of offer by type of tourist services (summer vacation, travelling/trip, cruising).

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In this chapter, IUCN categories of protected areas are defined, along with categories of protected areas in Croatia and Slovenia with emphasis on the harmonisation thereof with IUCN categories. Additionally, the intent of each individual category of protected area in Croatian and Slovenian legislation is explained, in order to assess the possibility of their tourism valorisation and make a comparison. Tourism develops and influences space in different ways throughout the world. This means that in the most visited protected areas, tourism has become one of the key factors for transformation of protected areas and their surroundings. In contrast, tourism is not strongly developed in less-popular protected areas, and their scientific, educational, and recreational functions are stronger than tourism.

This collection of research is the result of fruitful collaboration between the Department of Geography of the University of Zagreb in Croatia, and the Department of Geography of the University of Primorska in Slovenia, which was implemented within the framework of a bilateral research pro-ject entitled “Comparative analysis of spatial development of tourism in protected areas of Croatia and Slovenia”, in 2018 and 2019. The authors found a background for their research in the fact that Croatia and Slovenia are interesting cases for examining the spatial development of tourism in protected areas of nature, as they shared the same socio-economic context of development in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After their independence and the period of transition, they faced different development dynamics and adopted various approaches for management and development of protected areas. Today, both countries are members of the European Union and are confronted with many similar challenges regarding the implementation of the concept of sustainable tourism in protected areas.

This chapter discusses different management approaches and recommendations for administration of protected areas, where tourism is recognised as one of the most important management challenges-depending on the situation, it can be either a curse or a blessing. Therefore, the goal of this chapter is to compare methods of management of protected areas in Croatia and Slovenia, with an emphasis on tourism. The systems of administering protected areas in both countries show some similarities, but also have major differences. In Slovenia, the system is relatively decentralised, especially for protected areas that are of a lower category of protection. This is the result of a bottom-up approach. In Croatia, the top-down approach, mainly characterised by centralised management, prevails-especially in the case of management of national parks and nature parks. Differences in management approaches influence the level to which a given protected area is included in the tourism supply, which is consequentially reflected in forms of tourism as well as differential spatial influences.

This collection of research is the result of fruitful collaboration between the Department of Geography of the University of Zagreb in Croatia, and the Department of Geography of the University of Primorska in Slovenia, which was implemented within the framework of a bilateral research project entitled "Comparative analysis of spatial development of tourism in protected areas of Croatia and Slovenia", in 2018 and 2019. The authors found a background for their research in the fact that Croatia and Slovenia are interesting cases for examining the spatial development of tourism in protected areas of nature, as they shared the same socioeconomic context of development in the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. After their independence and the period of transition, they faced different development dynamics and adopted various approaches for management and development of protected areas. Today, both countries are members of the European Union and are confronted with many similar challenges regarding the implementation of the concept of sustainable tourism in protected areas. The main objective was to perform a comparative analysis of the spatial development of tourism in protected areas in Croatia and Slovenia. In order to achieve this goal, the authors of the chapters studied several examples of tourism development in protected areas in both countries. Spatial development of tourism was analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods (e.g. in-depth interviews with relevant stakeholders) with an ap-Preface challenges of tourism development in protected areas of croatia and slovenia

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