And, we’re off! Let them in! At our home every year, we have the Festival before the Dubrovnik Summer Festival. Foreigners and locals come to visit us, and a revolving door is still an unfulfilled dream for me. After very changeable and unpredictable weather where we were searching the house for "where are our sweaters," summer has arrived in full force!

The number of guests in Dubrovnik has long been (too) numerous, the crowds are unbearable, and life (in the car) is sometimes hell. Every day feels like a new adventure; you set off somewhere, but when you will actually arrive, well nobody knows. From international power outages that leave the road infrastructure like a Mad Max movie or an accident that shuts down the main artery.

A few days ago, I received proof of how hectic my life (and our lives) is. Namely, my mother from Great Britain visited us again this year at the beginning of June. We are used to her visits; she loves our City, my Župa, Cavtat, Konavle, and we love hosting her and enjoying her company. A few days ago, I came home from work in the middle of the day, exhausted from fighting through traffic, the heat, swearing, and explaining to people why I was late (because I was in the car, in a traffic jam), and the first thing I see is my mother, sitting on the couch with a book in her hand, calm, a perfect measure of zen. "Hello darling," she said calmly. And then I realized, this is it! Retirement!

As always, this situation made me think about the travels of older people and their expectations of the destinations they visit. I am very aware of the fact that in Croatia, many retirees live on a very low standard, most of them in big cities where "even the air costs." Therefore, I focused on the “travelling class” because, thanks to low-cost airlines, travel is very accessible today.

Following my mother's travels (she is my closest source of information), somehow, out of all the experiences – visits to museums, landmarks, various events – it’s always the people who stand out, their openness, kindness, and desire to please her not only as a guest but also as a person of mature age (I can't write older because she reads the column).

Of course, the current heat wave is slowly melting her, so she tries her best to avoid the midday sun, which is why I always thought (and probably she did too) that the bookends of the summer season would be the most suitable. And probably the best to market to our SAGA guests. In fact, my mother has been here in the dead of winter and had just as good a time away from the hustle and bustle of the crowds.

For in reality, we are indeed an ideal destination for the over 60s.

On several occasions, I have written about people in the service industry that she fondly remembers to this day. Then there is the availability of things that older tourists staying in the wider Dubrovnik area would like to see, and when it comes to transport, it seems to me that even Babin Kuk has become a wider area.

Cavtat and Župa are covered by boats and speedboats, which makes visiting the old city center really easy, but what about other parts of the city and suburban areas? I know many will say, "why don't they stay at home," but not everyone is the same; some grow all their lives, and some get stuck in their 50s "because they got old."

Are we, as a very popular tourist destination, accessible and adapted for our older visitors? And there is also something of a cultural difference. Pensioners from the UK just love to travel, and not just from my island but also from the US, Germany, etc. The so-called “grey travel market” is a huge business. Which is hardly surprising as in England the over 60s hold two-thirds of the nation’s wealth.

So inevitably, a market, or a population, that we should be doing more to attract. We hold all the aces already. We just need to shuffle them a little and present them in the right way. I’m off to take my mother to another beach, or sight or attraction, and no doubt we’ll have a day of laughter and love. My revolving front door will be spinning for a few months yet.

Read more Englishman in Dubrovnik…well, if you really want to

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About the author
Mark Thomas (aka Englez u Dubrovniku) is the editor of The Dubrovnik Times. He was born and educated in the UK and moved to live in Dubrovnik in 1998. He works across a whole range of media, from a daily radio show to TV and in print. Thomas is fluent in Croatian and this column is available in Croatia on the website – Dubrovnik Vjesnik