engleski

River Cruise Industry: Trends and Challenges

International river cruises have a symbolic share in the overall cruise market. Nevertheless, this market is expanding rapidly and is one of the fastest-growing segments of tourism with an annual growth rate of 10 to15%. At this moment, Europe has the leading role and the largest share in world river cruise market where the most frequent cruises take place on the Danube River and its tributaries and the canal of Rhein - Maine - Danube. There are several reasons for this sudden growth in river cruises, such as the upgrading of ships and the launch of new ones, younger generations becoming more interested in river cruising, high-value experience for the price and rivers as new attractive destinations. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to examine and determine the basic features of the river cruise market with a special emphasis on the analysis of tourism offer and demand, current trends, incentives and limiting factors for future development of river cruises and challenges of the river cruise industry. The theoretical elaboration of the described issues includes the documentation analysis method, the method of analysis and synthesis, as well as the comparative method, while the analysis of data on the websites of the largest riverboat operators is applied for the purpose of collecting primary data. The contribution of the paper will be shown as and identification of key determinants for future development of river cruise tourism in conditions of strong market competition and challenging demand under the influence of new technologies, with a strong need for adventure travel and discovery of the new and unknown.

cruise market, river tourism, tourism trends

nije evidentirano