Croatian economics faculty combining cultural tourism research and regional development expertise with emerging AI-driven labour market and macroeconomic analysis.
The Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism at the University of Split is a Croatian academic institution focused on regional economic development, tourism economics, and applied social science research. Their work centers on understanding how cultural tourism, governance models, and AI-driven labor market analysis can drive sustainable growth in European regions. They bring an economics lens to policy questions — from measuring tourism impact on local communities to modeling how artificial intelligence reshapes workforce participation across macroeconomies.
SmartCulTour (EUR 340K) focused on cultural tourism as a driver for sustainable regional development using living labs and decision support systems; WIRE 2020 addressed resilient European regions.
WIRE 2020 explored place-sensitive governance and regional resilience; SmartCulTour built impact analysis tools for European regions.
AI4LABOUR (2021-2025) applies deep learning and machine learning to model how AI reshapes labour force participation at the macroeconomic level.
SmartCulTour employed living labs and participatory approaches for community-driven tourism planning and impact measurement.
HNV-Link involved the faculty as a third party contributor to research on high nature value farming innovation networks.
Their early H2020 involvement (2016-2019) centered on rural heritage, place-sensitive governance, and nature-linked agricultural systems — largely policy-oriented and qualitative in nature. From 2020 onward, the focus shifted decisively toward data-driven approaches: decision support systems for tourism impact, and deep learning applied to macroeconomic labour force modeling. The trajectory shows a faculty moving from traditional regional policy research toward computational economics and AI-augmented analysis.
They are pivoting from qualitative policy research toward quantitative, AI-powered economic analysis — expect future proposals to combine regional development expertise with machine learning methods.
With only one coordination (the smaller CSA event WIRE 2020) and participation roles in their larger research projects, they typically contribute domain expertise rather than lead consortia. Their 33 unique partners across 16 countries indicate broad European networking despite modest project volume — they connect widely rather than deeply. This suggests an accessible, cooperative partner comfortable joining diverse teams without demanding a leadership seat.
Despite only 4 projects, they have built a surprisingly broad network of 33 partners across 16 countries, indicating strong pan-European connectivity well beyond what their project count would suggest. No obvious geographic clustering — they work across the EU rather than concentrating on the Mediterranean or CEE region alone.
They sit at an unusual intersection: a business and tourism faculty that has moved into AI and computational economics. Most economics faculties in Southeast Europe remain in traditional quantitative research — this group's combination of regional tourism expertise with emerging deep learning capabilities is distinctive. For consortium builders, they offer a rare bridge between social science rigor and data science methods, grounded in a tourism-heavy Croatian regional economy that serves as a natural living lab.
