engleski

Creating innovative tourism experiences through sustainable valorisation of archaeological heritage

The paper presentsthe results of aresearch conducted withinthe framework of ArchaeoCulTour, a recent project whose main goal was to analyse the potential of valorisingarchaeological heritage in the Istria County, Croatia, through sustainable tourism. The main aim of the projectisto develop a successful and innovative strategy for sustainable cultural tourism growth in Istria as the most developed Croatian tourist region, characterized by an abundance of archaeological sites, which are still not adequately valorised, presented and interpreted. The authors have tested the key hypotheses on a local case study –elaborating potentials for the valorisation of archaeological heritage in the Municipality of Vrsar in Western Istria, which was chosen because it represents a typical coastal tourist destination in Croatia and on the Mediterranean, characterized by mass tourism and a remarkable seasonality. In this paper, the authors present the results of the third stage of the research –a tourist survey conducted during spring and summer 2018. The aim ofthe researchwas to analyse visitors's motivations and acitivites related to archaeologicaltourismin the Vrsar municipality and in the near-by Rovinj, which could be considered a model of sustainable cultural tourism development.The results have confimed the results of the previous two research phases, related to the experts’ attitudes and the local community survey, both oriented towards considering the current tourism development trends in the observed municipality and its developement potentials. All key stakeholders agree that the main sustainability issues in the Vrsar municipality, i.e. high seasonality, mass tourism, infrastructure problems, could be resolved through sustainable valorisation of the local cultural and natural resources by creating innovative tourism expriences.

sustainable tourism ; archaeological heritage ; innovative tourism ; tourists’ perception ; Istria

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