TouRisk 2026 in Zadar opens a topic that is no longer secondary: security is becoming one of the key issues of Croatian tourism
From April 13 to 15, 2026, the TouRisk Conference 2026 will be held at Hotel Pinija in Petrčane near Zadar, a professional gathering dedicated to managing security and risks in tourism. According to the official announcements of the organizers, it is a conference that brings together leading domestic and foreign experts in the fields of security, crisis management, and tourism business, with the aim of exchanging knowledge, opening space for cooperation, and shaping new standards in a sector that is of strategic importance to the Croatian economy. The conference program and promotional materials state that more than 200 participants from leading companies and institutions are expected, as well as a series of panels and lectures on current challenges in risk management in tourism.
The announcement of such an event comes at a time when security in tourism is no longer a narrowly operational topic reserved only for security guards, crisis headquarters, or insurers. Security issues today cover a broader spectrum of challenges: from geopolitical instability, climate risks, and health resilience, to cybersecurity, food safety, payment security, and destination reputation management. That is precisely why TouRisk 2026 is not conceived merely as a specialized professional gathering, but as a meeting place for the public sector, private tourism companies, technology firms, insurers, the academic community, and stakeholders who manage complex systems every day in which even the smallest security failure can have major financial and reputational consequences.
For Croatia, a country that according to data from the Ministry of Tourism and Sport recorded more than 21.8 million arrivals and 110.1 million overnight stays in 2025, the issue of the resilience of the tourism system is not theoretical, but highly practical. Such a volume of traffic means a huge concentration of people, infrastructure, digital transactions, and logistics processes, especially on the Adriatic, where 104.6 million overnight stays were recorded last year. In such an environment, security is not only a matter of guest protection, but also of business continuity, the operation of destinations, the functioning of коммунal and transport systems, and preserving the trust that forms the foundation of every successful tourist season.
A conference at a time when tourism is increasingly tied to system resilience
The official TouRisk website describes the conference as an event on security and risk management in tourism, and lists among its patrons the Ministry of Tourism and Sport, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Association of Cities. The very fact that the conference is positioned between the tourism, security, and public policy sectors shows how much the understanding of tourism success has changed. In recent years, it is no longer enough to talk only about the number of guests, occupancy, and revenues. There is increasing discussion about how prepared a destination is for disruptions, how quickly it can respond to an incident, and how effectively it can protect guests, employees, infrastructure, and reputation.
This shift is also visible in the state's official strategic documents. The Ministry of Tourism and Sport states that the Sustainable Tourism Development Strategy until 2030 is aligned with national and European development documents and sustainability goals. Such a framework does not speak only about growth, but also about managing development pressures, quality of life, resilience, and the long-term maintenance of competitiveness. In the international context, a similar direction is promoted by UN Tourism through initiatives that treat security, crisis preparedness, and recovery after disruptions as an integral part of sustainable tourism, and not as a separate, marginal topic.
TouRisk therefore fits into the broader trend of the professionalization of tourism management. Tourism has long been viewed primarily as an industry of experience and service, but modern circumstances show that it increasingly has to be managed as a system of high risk intensity. Hotels, campsites, marinas, ports, private accommodation, events, and transport are connected in a network in which physical security, digital systems, supply chains, and public communication are interdependent. If one segment fails, the consequences spill over to the entire chain.
Who is coming and who is the gathering intended for
According to the official information published on the conference website and in partners' announcements, TouRisk 2026 is intended for employees of public and state institutions related to tourism, the management of hotels, campsites, marinas, and port authorities, risk management experts, companies from related industries such as transport, security, IT, insurance, and the food chain, as well as private renters and caterers. This breadth of audience indicates that the organizers do not treat security as a narrow specialization, but as a topic that spills across almost all levels of the tourism system.
For large hotel groups and managers of complex facilities, such a conference has obvious business value because it opens questions of procedures, standards, insurance, employer responsibility, guest safety, and the protection of digital systems. For local self-government units and public institutions, it is important because the management of tourism risks does not take place only within hotels, but also at the level of the city, the utility system, transport, public spaces, and the coordination of services. For small renters and caterers, who often do not have dedicated security or compliance departments, the message is equally important: small operators also become part of the overall reputation of the destination and are increasingly exposed to market demands when it comes to security, transparency, and service reliability.
That is precisely why it is important that the organizers announce a meeting of different professions. In practice, the greatest number of problems in tourism do not occur because there is no individual solution, but because different stakeholders do not have sufficiently harmonized procedures, information exchange, or clear jurisdictions. Professional gatherings like this therefore have a dual value: they transfer knowledge, but also help create a common language between sectors that otherwise operate separately.
A program that shows how broad the topic is
The published TouRisk program shows that the organizers view security in tourism far more broadly than classic physical protection. In the introductory part of the first day, welcome speeches by the conference director and representatives of the Ministry of Tourism and Sport are planned, followed by a panel on the relationship between trust, security, and destination reputation, featuring the Ambassador of Finland to Croatia Sirpa Oksanen and the Ambassador of Italy to Croatia Paolo Trichilo. That very opening suggests that security is not viewed only through an operational prism, but also through the international perception of the destination and the role of trust in shaping the tourism image of a country.
Among the prominent speakers is Amy Lamé, presented as London's first Night Czar, with a topic on organizing the nighttime urban economy and the impact of security as a component of the tourist destination. The program continues with lectures that place security in a broader geopolitical and business framework. Thus, a presentation by Kristijan Kotarski on tourism in a geopolitical storm is announced, as well as a lecture by international consultant Marko Cabrica on how security increases perceived value in tourism. This opens an important message for the sector: security is not only a cost or a regulatory obligation, but also an element of market value that affects the guest's choice, length of stay, willingness to spend, and the overall impression of the destination.
The program also moves in a distinctly practical direction. Presentations are announced on food safety as a key component of hospitality, secure payments from booking to guest check-out, artificial intelligence and intelligence analytics in climate security, the psychology of security in the age of cyber threats, contextual cyber security from reservation to incident, and the use of advanced technical systems for protection, surveillance, and real-time reporting. Particularly interesting is also the lecture on OSINT, that is, methods of collecting and analyzing publicly available information to predict and reduce risks in tourism. Such a combination of topics shows how security challenges in tourism today extend from the reception desk and hotel corridor to data systems, network threats, communication with guests, and the assessment of external risks.
Why the location in Petrčane and Zadar is a logical choice
The conference will be held at Hotel Pinija in Petrčane, not far from Zadar. The organizers and partners present this location as a combination of conference infrastructure and a Mediterranean environment, and the geographical position itself also has additional symbolism. Zadar and its wider region are strongly reliant on tourism, but at the same time encompass different types of tourism products and spaces: city tourism, family accommodation, campsites, nautical tourism, excursion programs, events, and seasonally intensive traffic flows. This is precisely the type of area where it becomes clear how multilayered a topic security in tourism is.
Petrčane and the Zadar area are located in a zone that during the tourist season requires high coordination of public services, traffic flow, healthcare availability, maritime safety, consumer protection, and digital reliability. That is why a conference in such an environment does not act as an abstract discussion, but as a conversation placed in real terrain. For participants from hospitality, local government, and the security sector, this gives additional operational value because the topics they discuss can easily be linked to concrete challenges that exist on the Adriatic.
According to announcements on the official website, a promotional accommodation model at Hotel Pinija has also been secured for participants, which confirms that the organizers are also counting on the arrival of a broader professional audience from outside the local area. The partners' announcements also mention benefits for members of the Association of Cities, which further points to the ambition that the gathering should not be exclusively commercial, but also a platform on which representatives of the public sector will participate.
From food safety to cyber risks: what today falls under the concept of tourism security
One of the more important messages of TouRisk is that security in tourism can no longer be reduced to one service, one procedure, or one department. In modern tourism business, risks are dispersed. They appear in the food supply chain, in facility management, in the processing of card and other digital payments, in reservation systems, in communication with guests, in event management, but also in the ability of a destination to communicate quickly and credibly during disruptions.
When the conference program combines the topic of food safety with the topic of secure payments and cyber resilience, it is a sign that the sector is entering a more mature phase. Today, the guest does not assess security only by whether there is physical protection or video surveillance. Security is also manifested in how their personal data are protected, how secure the reservation process is, how clear the response of the facility or destination is in a crisis situation, how transparent the business rules are, and what the system's ability is to prevent or mitigate an incident. In that sense, security directly enters the very quality of the tourism experience.
For Croatian tourism, this is particularly important because a large part of the sector is highly fragmented. Alongside large hotel and camping systems, there are thousands of small renters, caterers, and smaller operators. Their ability to keep up with all security, regulatory, and technological changes is not equal, but the reputational effect of their failures can be shared. That is precisely why conferences that translate complex security topics into the language of tourism business can have a broader effect than the three-day program itself.
TouRisk Awards as an attempt to turn security into a benchmark, and not just an impression
A special segment of the conference consists of the TouRisk Awards 2026, which the official website states are the first awards for security in tourism in Croatia and the European Union based on objective indexation. The organizers describe them as a multilayered, data-based model that measures the actual level of security and risk management in tourism. According to the published information, applications are open for hotels, campsites, destinations, events, marinas, as well as nature parks and national parks, and the application deadline is April 1, 2026. The ceremonial award presentation is planned for April 14 at Hotel Pinija.
The very idea of the awards is important because it shows an attempt to stop viewing security in tourism only through marketing or general impression. If a certain level of preparedness, incident management, and standards can be measured, compared, and evaluated, then security becomes an operational management category, and not just a declarative value. This is particularly important in a sector in which quality is often assessed through stars, reviews, and market perceptions, while systematic indicators of resilience remain less visible.
Of course, the actual weight of such awards will depend on the transparency of the criteria, the quality of the methodology, and the way the market and institutions accept them. But the very fact that space is opening up for standardized evaluation of security practices is a signal that the sector is moving toward a more mature management model. At a time when reputational shocks are fast and information spreads instantly, measurable standards are becoming increasingly important both for business entities and for destinations.
What TouRisk says about the change of priorities in Croatian tourism
Croatian tourism policy has in recent years strongly emphasized sustainability, quality, and the balance between growth and system resilience. TouRisk 2026 can be read precisely in that context. While earlier the key words of the tourist season were mostly numbers, records, and occupancy, today issues of risk management, service standards, technological security, and coordination between the public and private sectors are gaining increasingly more space.
This does not mean that security will become a new marketing slogan, but that it will be increasingly difficult to separate it from the overall quality of the offer. Guests choose destinations also according to the feeling of trust, investors look at system resilience, local communities expect greater predictability and better coordination, and institutions want to reduce the vulnerability of a sector that has great weight for the national economy. In that framework, the conference in Zadar is not just an event for experts, but also an indicator that the way of thinking in tourism is changing.
If TouRisk succeeds in connecting strategic discussions with concrete operational solutions, its reach could be greater than the conference hall itself. Croatian tourism, which enters 2026 with a record traffic base from the previous year and pressure to remain at the same time competitive, sustainable, and resilient, can be helped by precisely such formats so that security ceases to be a topic discussed only after an incident. In that sense, the gathering in Petrčane has the potential to become more than a one-off event: a place where the tourism industry faces the fact that security is today an integral part of the value of a destination, and not its hidden technical add-on.
Sources:- TouRisk Conference 2026 – official conference website with basic information, program, speakers, partners, and location (link)- TouRisk Awards 2026 – official awards website with a description of the methodology, categories, and application deadlines (link)- Ministry of Tourism and Sport of the Republic of Croatia – official data on Croatia's tourism results in 2025 (link)- Ministry of Tourism and Sport of the Republic of Croatia – Sustainable Tourism Development Strategy until 2030 and related planning documents (link)- Association of Cities – conference announcement with information on the date, location, and audience for whom the event is intended (link)
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