Possibilities of music heritage tourist valorization – an example of Istria

The classic concept of a tourist offer belongs to the past. Today, tourists are motivated by visiting interesting destinations, rich with offer founded on autochthonous elements valorization. Culture, being a basic offer element in cultural tourism, should become a part of a so called creative tourism as well, in which a tourist – visitor is not only a tourist attractions passive observer, but an active participant. Croatian tourist product indicates surfeiting and a certain «tiredness», so the classic forms of tourist offer, already behind us, have lost their key role of attracting tourist masses. On the other hand, Croatia overflows with valuable tourist resources, many of which bear a stamp of autochthtony. Such resources, allowing for some minor efforts, can be presented to tourists through adequate tourist valorization. However, the succesfull inclusion of those valuable resources in tourist offer is to be preceded by raising public awareness (and self-confidence) of our country culture wealth. Music heritage is just one of the elements in Croatian tourism resource richness. One of the Croatian music heritage basic characteristics is the fact that each Croatian region is distinguished by a specific, characteristic music heritage. That is applicable to Istria as well, while the Istrian music scale, unique in the world, suggested for inclusion in UNESCO List of World Heritage, deserves a «special treatment». In this work, the authors point to the necessity of tourist offer enrichment by the inclusion of cultural resources concerned with music, particularly in the case of Istrian region. That should be achieved through primarily organized offer of specific cultural itineraries, «Istrian music Paths», as a kind of «mix» of this cultural tourism form and other selective tourism types. Moreover, in work is stated that tourism, through self-resources valorization, will retroactively have an impact on this valuable cultural resource preserving.