‘Shame on you’: 70 euros for a boat to Vela Luka
Fans heading to the Trag u beskraju concert paid 40 euros one way and 30 back. Influencer Lana Vidosevic called out whoever set the price, and the row is now bigger than the concert.
The price of a boat ride to Vela Luka has outlasted the concert it was meant to serve. Influencer Lana Vidosevic posted on TikTok that getting to the tribute night for Oliver Dragojevic cost 70 euros a head, 40 euros out and 30 euros back, and asked who set that number.
The concert took place on Wednesday, July 29, on a floating stage moored off the waterfront in Vela Luka, starting at 9 p.m. Organisers said they expected around 30,000 people. Vela Luka is a town of a few thousand on the island of Korcula, so nearly all of that audience had to arrive by sea.
‘I could fly to Spain and back for that’
Vidosevic measured the fare against an airline ticket, then ended the post by naming the problem directly:
“Shame on you for charging prices like that. Oliver would not have wanted this”
In the same post she spelled out the comparison: “For that money I could buy a return ticket to Spain, Italy and plenty of other places.” The clip spread through Thursday and pushed the argument past the sum itself and onto how the people who show up for the anniversary every July are being treated. Who actually set the fares is not clear from the posts.
Why is the boat the only realistic way in?
Korcula has no bridge to the mainland. Vela Luka sits at the western end of the island and is reached by ferry and catamaran from Split, or the long way round, on the Orebic to Domince ferry and then a drive across the whole island. For a same-day trip to a concert starting at nine in the evening, the boat is the only workable option. That is why the fare here reads less like travel expense and more like a condition of entry.
Put 30,000 expected visitors next to a town reachable only by sea and the arithmetic is simple. One evening required moving several times the town’s population, in the hours before the start and again after midnight. The regular timetable does not stretch that far.
Eight years since Dragojevic died
Oliver Dragojevic died on July 29, 2018 in Split and was buried in Vela Luka, the town where he was born. The Trag u beskraju festival has run every July since, and this year’s edition opened on Sunday, July 26, with the traditional singing ferry. The next day brought a launch for Ante Gelo’s book “Oliver za gitaru” and a “Mladi pjevaju Olivera” concert in Zardin.
Wednesday’s line-up on the floating stage included:
- Petar Graso, Zorica Kondza and Nina Badric
- Matija Cvek, Marko Tolja and Jakov Jozinovic
- Ivica Sikiric Ico, Iva Ajdukovic and Ines Trickovic
- Klapa Osjak and the Ante Gelo Band
Croatian public broadcaster HRT carried the show, which gave the night an audience that travelled nowhere. That is part of why the gap registered so fast: one group watched for free, another spent 70 euros purely to reach the waterfront.
What the row leaves behind
The programme in Vela Luka is not finished. Thursday, July 30, brings a charity football match and more concerts, and on Friday, July 31, Nina Badric performs with the Ante Gelo Acoustic Orchestra, a sold-out night. So the fare argument lands in the middle of the festival rather than after it, and every one of those arrivals runs down the same sea route.
The festival has always depended on people coming in from across the region rather than on local guests. If the boat to Vela Luka costs 70 euros again next summer, part of that crowd simply will not set out, and in a town this size the absence shows up immediately.
