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Implications and Contribution of Sustainable Tourism Development of the Kvarner Region

The topic of the paper is the analysis of the existing and potential tourism development impacts on the Kvarner region (Croatia), the region where the tourism is a dominant economic activity. Tourism development of Kvarner region is been seen in the context of sustainable development concept, with the main aim to significantly improve the general welfare of the local residents. The goal of the paper is to define the appropriate activities and main subjects, with the purpose to implement the principles of sustainable development and to bring into harmony economic, ecological and socio-cultural aims of the Kvarner region tourism development. Within the purpose of effective implementation of the sustainable tourism development concept in the paper are: (a) analyzed the present situation and the condition of available resources in the contexts of contemporary tourism trends ; (b) identified the key development limitations and threats ; (c) selected and developed the set of indicators for monitoring the implementation of sustainable tourism development concept ; (d) identified the main problems that Kvarner will have to face in future. Research base of the paper is the filed research and drawn up an inventory of available resources of the Kvarner destination, and complex survey (questionnaire) on the representative sample of four target groups: tourists, local residents, renters and tourism managers. The groups were asked to rate the various elements of the tourist offer. An attempt was made to determine whether these groups perceive individual elements in the same way or not. For the purpose of the paper especially will be pointed out the issues connected with the implementation of sustainable development concept. It is well known that because of the growing number of population, higher personal standard of living, improvement of transport facilities, more free time and other factors, it should be expected the tourist traffic to become higher in a future. Therefore, all tourist destinations, including Kvarner, will have to face the pressure on their natural, socio-cultural and economic environment. Tourism, more than any other economic activity depends on the condition of environment, social and cultural attributes of the area. Uncontrolled development of tourism can, as a consequence, destroy the base and degraded the resources which have at the beginning been the main impulse for tourism development. To be long term economically sustainable tourism must be ecologically sustainable – this is the hypothesis for future tourism development planning of Kvarner according to the principles of sustainability. The attractiveness of Kvarner as tourist destination and economic base of tourism will therefore depends on successful natural and cultural resources management. In the competitive world tourist market the quality of natural environment, its' preservation and attractiveness, i.e. ecological value of the Kvarner tourist product will have a great importance. Therefore, the ecological values of Kvarner region have been analyzed from two points of view: as a prerequisite for future tourism development and as an integral part of tourist product of Kvarner. Future of tourism in the Kvarner region is in the integration of economic activities and sustainable development with the special accent on the condition of natural environment. The aim is to build the positive relationship between the economy and ecology. In the paper the model of implementation and the main implications of the sustainable tourism development on economic, ecological and socio-cultural environment of the Kvarner region will be presented.

sustainable development; tourism developmentT; Kvarner Region

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