July 5, 2020 - The Croatian media has started to take an interest in the Total Croatia Travel INFO Viber community. An interview with one of its founders by Netokracija
What kind of information is the most interesting for foreigners?
The really simple things such as can I come to Croatia? The lack of transparent information is breathtaking for an industry which is 20% of Croatia's GDP. We have had a lot of questions from North Americans wanting to find out how to visit Croatia, Brits on air bridges, the driving experience with borders throughout Europe, testing, quarantine, help with the entercroatia.mup.hr form, unmarried partners of Croatian citizens, border questions. A broad mix. It has been a very interesting exercise, with many community members posting their real-life travel experiences, so that we actually have the most up-to-date situation online regarding travel to Croatia right now.
It is now in 24 languages, so very helpful for all our tourists, and updated in real time. Viber told us that we had 100,000 visits in the first month - big thanks to the team who helped me with this. It has been a great learning experience.
Why Viber? Why not a Facebook group? On May 17, Macan and I went to Bregana to see what was happening on the border as there was no information, and our readers were asking questions. Full respect to MUP, they were doing an incredible job (and continue to do so), but tourists were being turned away as they did not have paid accommodation. I asked Macan why we did not have a Viber account such as the excellent koronavirus.hr updates. He suggested we create one ourselves. I laughed, explaining I was such a technology champion that I did not know how to download Viber onto my desktop. He told me to come to his office in two days. There I sat with him and two interns. Within 20 minutes, the community was live, within an hour we had our Infographic, and within 2 hours we had 500 community members. And there were asking questions. Mostly in Hungarian. Macan showed me the Viber auto-translate feature, and there I was, two hours after watching one of the interns downloading Viber to my laptop, answering travel questions in Hungarian. My kids thought it was the funniest thing ever. And then a Hungarian community member asked if we could have the infographic in Hungarian. I asked the community for a volunteer translator. By the end of the day, the infographic was in 12 languages. The next day, the daily update was available in 24 languages. And the questions were getting answered in all languages. The questions showed us where the confusion was, so I produced articles of explanation on each issue, then added those links to the daily update. And so now the questions are less, and other community members are also helping with the answers. https://www.total-croatia-news.com/travel/44798-netokracija
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