Tourism acitivities represent a significant segment of world economy. This paper is a brief analysis of the specifics of tourism investments. It is difficult to quantify full effects of tourism on economy because of difficulties in separating purely tourism acitivities from the partially connected to tourism. Same difficulties are present in measuring volume and effectiveness of tourism investments. This paper defines terms of investing from the aspect of microeconomics and macroeconomics. Main focus is on analyzing tourism investing, it being both work and capital-intensive acitivity. Paper reveals the state of the art and problems related to investments in developement potentials in Croatia. It also explores main methods of measuring efficiency of investments, including the calculations of average ICOR value for tourism industry investments (activities related to accomodation providing and preparations and service of food, present in National Classification of Activities). Trends in absolute volume of investment along with data about share of tourism investments in total investments and in GDP are also presented. In addition to the theoretical part, paper also explores a selection of most relevant currently ongoing investment projects.