THE ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF INTRODUCING TOURIST VOUCHERS

Sa？etak The principal aim of this paper is to compare projects of tourism vouchers between chosen countries and to determine their positive and negative aspects. Tourism vouchers, as we analyze them in this paper, represent a national model that is used for consuming tourism products and services under certain, predefined conditions for specific users. Vouchers are a part of the fringe benefit system that, besides the possibility of a country offering them to selected beneficiaries, employers can offer them to their employees, and can take different forms, have different purpose and different prerequisites for use. We compare tourism trends between Croatia, Hungary and Serbia from January 2012 until July 2017 after which we compare two active projects of tourism vouchers in Hungary and Serbia with the potential project of introducing the voucher in Croatia. Our main conclusion is that the tourism voucher, as a national tourist program, can trigger a number of benefits but we cannot ignore the potential negative impacts that we have also covered in this paper. The introduction of tourism vouchers is also considered in the context of social tourism, since many countries include vulnerable groups (such as pensioners or unemployed) as beneficiaries of tourism vouchers