The beach Zrće – party planet on the island of Pag, Croatia

The beach Zrće (island of Pag), often promoted as a Croatian Ibiza, is an example of the ambiguity in tourist representations. In the official brochures it is just "one of the many beaches" but from the owners' of the clubs point of view the beach is not a part of the island of Pag and Croatia. The beach Zrće at the entrance of the town of Novalja on the northern part of the island of Pag has been profiled over the years into the most popular centre of entertainment on Croatian coast, young tourist destination and centre of clubbing tourism. During the high season the beach hosts parties, concerts and festivals and is the most frequently visited beach in the Adriatic. Unlike Ibiza, the clubs and the bars are right on the beach – but the pebbles, the sea and the seashore for the visitors serve only as scenery. The representation of the beach as party mecca is autonomous from the town of Novalja, when represented on the web sites of beachclubs. In this paper we will analyze duality of representations of the beach Zrće as an internationally recognizable brand, and merely one of the local island beaches in the representations and promotions of local tourist boards. We are going to focus on the transformation of the town of Novalja, primarily location for family tourism, into the most touristic town of the island of Pag. In diachronic overview we will reconstruct the transformation of destination image and promotion of beach and nearby town from the 1980's until today. Our primary interest is an image shaping of town and mentioned beach and shift of attractiveness that has occurred in the recent years.