It's not like that strategy isn't working out lol.
The issue at the root of it is that Croatia wants to diversify from tourism and agriculture, its main sources of income... but for that, it needs money. With Russia invading Ukraine, a ton of Russian tourists went missing (if you ask me: thank God), and so the remaining ones are getting fleeced for all they're worth.
The side effect is that the locals are getting shafted. Supermarket prices are at German levels (on the islands it's even worse)... the only thing saving most locals is that Croats tend to outright own their homes and a lot of Croats have houses large enough for two families if not more. That makes high cost of living a lot more bearable.
And the fact that the geography makes supplying the coastal areas very inefficient doesn't help either. Along the coast from Rijeka all the way down to Zadar there is only the one single-lane long magistrala with only a few passthroughs through the mountain and the recently constructed highways... but no train, it's only in Rijeka and Zadar again. And with the exception of Krk which is connected by bridge, all of the islands have to be supplied by ferry, but the trucks that haul all the goods have to wait sometimes for hours to get on the ferry, the only fast lane is for the public transit buses and authorities.