Photographs that look like visuals from attractive lifestyle magazines actually represent the most popular photographs of Istria within the online world, and all thanks to the Share Istria project. Their authors are Stephanie Be, an American blogger, and Taylor Michael Burk, a talented photographer from Canada, who together as a team won the Share Istria 2015 campaign!

The Share Istria project was designed with the aim of providing a unique experience of a destination and the promotion of Istria through the eyes and experiences of bloggers and influencers in Istria. The competitors, with over 5 thousand fans on their social networks, were each chosen to come to Istria and to participate in the project.

Bloggers and influencers from Italy, Austria, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and Hungary, from France, then from Norway, Denmark and Finland, as well as from Serbia and Spain, the USA and Canada all took part in the Share Istria 2015 project.

The overall competition was followed via website, and each week the best team was chosen to enter the competition with the hope of winning the main prize worth 10,000 euros. Selected teams stayed for 7 days on a unique island at the Porer lighthouse in the waters of Medulin, whilst the second part of the holiday was spent at the small, family run, Kaštel hotel in Motovun or at Rovinj’s designer hotel Lone. Every day was different, filled with a variety of activities organised by the Istrian Tourist Board.

This, of course, included a visit to a large number of events so that in May, the Italian teams visited the Red Bull Air Race mega spectacle, whilst competitors of the forth project week enjoyed the Beach Volleyball World Championship in Poreč.

In June, guests had the opportunity of seeing a play, Istra Inspirit Morgan’s Treasure in Dvigrad that truly delighted them together with a visit to the Umag ATP, which particularly cheered up the Spanish blogger as teams had the chance to see the match and meet with Carlos Moya.

We are pleased to introduce some of the participants...

Milan Vučičević is known in the virtual world under his nickname, Nichim Izazvan. A famous influencer who has more than 120,000 fans on his Twitter profile, and the figures on his Instagram profile are in continued growth…
@NichimIzazvan

Ashley Colburn, TV producer, winner of two Emmy Awards came to visit Istria with Perrie Hartz, the editor of the prestigious Fodor's Travel, whose posts are followed by tens of thousands of followers on Instagram and a further five hundred thousand on Twitter…
@ashley_colburn
@perriehartz

Jonathan Howe, from Britain, is taking a three-year journey around the world, and he arrived to Istria from Costa Rica. This was his first visit to Croatia and he was especially delighted by the food…
@2monkeystravel

After 11 weeks and 30 influencers who visited Istria with their friends, the best team was chosen according to the criteria of a total number of posts, a total number of reaches on social networks and the quality of published content and the interaction achieved with the fan base:

The winning team was Stephanie Be (USA) and Taylor Michael Burk (Canada)
Stephanie & Taylor – thank you once again!
And many thanks to all our bloggers who joined us and told us their stories of Istria…
We hope to see you again soon in new walks along the Istrian peninsula!