In every analysis of the economic development of Croatia, education is pointed out as a key factor. With the share of highly educated in the workforce of less than 15 percent, Croatia is seriously lagging behind developed countries. Human resource management (HRM) is a philosophy, a way of thinking for each employee. It is especially important in service, work–intensive fields, such as tourism. Croatia should, as a country which declared itself tourism country, as soon as possible apply the good experiences, adopt ways of application and the practice and results of the HRM philosophy. It is impossible to manage the development of tourism without a strategically placed system of management of human resources. Since tourism, as a service field, rests for the biggest part on people, their work, serviceability, knowledge, abilities, education, motivation, intelligence, in short on the human potential, that potential should be treated as capital, not as an expense or a burden.