I researched the history of glamping – where, who, when, why – and came to some facts I want to share with you. So, glamping itself was born from joining two words, "glamorous" and "camping", arriving at the name glamping, a word that is new to many, though what comes through it is nothing new.
The word itself appeared in the United Kingdom in 2005, was adopted more widely only after 2010, and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 2016.
It is a concept that belongs to adventure tourism and offers a balance between adventure and comfort. Instead of classic tents and classic camping, tourists choose more luxurious tents, domes, wooden cabins or mobile homes, equipped like hotels with comfortable beds, air conditioning, internet and toilets, and often with additional facilities such as a pool, wellness, a restaurant and the like, depending on the concept.
They say today's interest in glamping traces back to luxury safari camps in Africa and Thailand, and you can also find legends that people were doing glamping in their own way as early as the 16th century. As an example there is the story of the Scottish Earl of Atholl, who on the highlands for King James V and his mother raised tents filled with everything that adorned his palace, only in the middle of the wilderness. Or an even greater example is the Field of the Cloth of Gold from 1520, when Francis I and Henry VIII raised nearly 2,800 tents and lavish pavilions, and fountains flowed with wine instead of water. So the concept of glamping was applied in its own way even then; only today, through the tourism industry, we have shaped it and given it a concrete name.
It may be interesting to mention that perhaps the largest dome in this part of Europe – and someone can correct me if I have overlooked something – is Hall 3 of the Belgrade Fair.
The glamping movement also has its unofficial slogan: "Think outside the tent". And really, who would have said that today there are more than 16 types of glamping, or variations of glamping structures – from tipis, cabins and treehouses to domes, trailers, wagons and the like. Objects can be "scattered" across a location or closer to one another, as a kind of community.
Here, in the first true glamping oasis in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Dracevo near Trebinje, the choice fell on domes and the "community" option. It involves 22 domes of 28 m² each, with additional facilities such as a pool, a wellness building, an outdoor gym, a shared fireplace, a zip line, paintball, a space for celebrations and much more.
Each cabin will have a QR code for ordering food, from meals to lunch packages, so those who like can even order from bed. Everything is designed for those who want an authentic experience of nature, but still do not want to give up a certain comfort.
Croatia and Slovenia were, as expected, the first to invest in this kind of accommodation, and today you can find different variations of glamping there. That Glamping Oasis Dracevo truly is the first such community in Bosnia and Herzegovina is also shown by the fact that on key websites that promote and offer exclusively glamping as a stay option, for now no option is listed, while on other classic accommodation search sites we can find sporadic cases where one or two properties are offered.
Practice shows that tourists from Western Europe, as far as our continent is concerned, are the main "travellers", and there is no doubt that this kind of accommodation will be most interesting to them, especially because it is a capacity that can receive more guests at the same time while offering them many activities on site. All in all an excellent idea, created for a specific kind of guest at first glance, but then you realise there is no person who will say they do not like nature and a natural setting, though they may not be inclined to camping – and this is for those people seeking an authentic experience without giving up comfort. So we arrive at a wider spectrum of users, although I can almost certainly say that the main guests will be foreign tourists.
An important factor in all of this is also the location of the settlement itself, a meeting point of Herzegovina through a village that belongs to Trebinje, yet only a few kilometres from Vjetrenica, the largest and most beautiful cave in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Zavala, the most beautiful Orthodox monastery we have, all just half an hour from the Adriatic coast.
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Act local, think global
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Visegrad. Between stone and words.
I am currently working on the Tourism Development Strategy for the municipality of Visegrad. When you deal with the strategic planning of a destination, you inevitably face numbers, capacities and infrastructure. Visegrad has weight. Visegrad is anything but ordinary. That is why, for the first time since secondary school, I took The Bridge on the Drina down from the shelf. This time, I admit, not superficially and out of duty, not as a student, but as a tourism professional with decades of experience. And I realised one thing: Ivo Andric wrote the most important branding guide for this place that we will ever have. In school, Andric was an obligation — pages you flipped through with resistance, whether we admit it or not. Those were sentences whose weight I could not carry, because I was not old enough to understand what “duration” means. Then it was an assignment. Today, as I think about the concept of Visegrad’s tourism product, I read the same book with different eyes. The eyes of someone who understands that a destination must also be an emotion. Fotografija: Marko Radić The bridge of Visegrad, the masterpiece of Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic, is for some passers-by only a photogenic spot; for others it is proof that an individual can leave a work that outlives politics, borders and time. UNESCO recognition, which will soon mark twenty years, is an obligation, a status, and today also a marketing tool. Why an obligation? Because we are obliged to tell visitors about encounters, suffering and hope. We are obliged to pass on the emotion. Visegrad is anything but ordinary. We often forget the power of the fact that we have a Nobel laureate. That prestigious award, never repeated in these parts, confirms that the story of the Drina is universal — and Andric becomes the translator of our complex history into a language the world can understand. “A people remembers and retells what it can grasp and what it manages to turn into legend. Everything else passes it by without a deeper trace, with the indifference of nameless natural phenomena; it does not stir the imagination and does not remain in memory.” When a foreign visitor comes to Visegrad, they want to feel the universality of a small place and a great story. That is the essence of what we call “storytelling” in tourism. Andric left us a gold mine of stories; it is up to us to tell them in a way today’s guest understands. As I walk through Visegrad, I see layers that sometimes conflict, yet together form a complete offer. On one side there is the modest house of Andric’s childhood and his classroom — authentic witnesses to the forming of a genius. And there is the powerful green Drina. Fotografija: Marko Radić On the other side, at the mouth of the Rzav, stands Andricgrad. Emir Kusturica’s vision. Tourism today asks for content. Critics say Andricgrad commercialises the myth, but visitors find an experience there. Visegrad is anything but ordinary. Visegrad will not spoil you with a simple story. It offers the bridge as authenticity and Andricgrad as content. And it is precisely that blend of old and new, the silence of the bridge and the bustle of the town, that keeps the destination alive. As I write, I keep asking myself — and answering — the same questions. What is tourism, and what are we actually selling? Tourism does not ask for sterile beauty. It asks for authenticity. Depth. Emotion. Returning to Andric, I realised that a tourism development strategy must not be only about beds and roads. It must be about a return to understanding. Our task is to bring the guest to the bridge not for a selfie, but to feel what Andric wrote in the silence of wartime Belgrade: that, as he says, “life is an incomprehensible miracle that is constantly spent and worn away, and yet endures and stands firm, like the bridge on the Drina.” That is the value Visegrad holds. That is the value we must offer the world we want to bring here. And you — have you visited Visegrad lately, and have you felt the “weight” of time that Andric writes about?