engleski

New age tourism : the challenge of developing tourism in continental Croatia

Fast-paced development of information and communication technology is favourable also for the globalization and internationalization processes. Social relations are changing. The modern way of life has decreased the polarity between the sphere of work and the sphere of leisure time. Lifestyle changes bring about also new needs in tourism. The largest proportion of tourists comes from the developed countries ; today these are mostly middle-class citizens of those countries. In European terms, tourist offer has been growing faster than demand for several years. This increases the competition and disrupts the economic basis of reproduction for the prevailing tourism model. When the model loses its balance, there is an immediate need for its reengineering and a projection of a new concept of tourism development: - Dynamic development of new needs creates communication by combining different cultural levels and the predominantly observed environment. The cultural level from which a potential tourist has originated is brought into balance with the cultural level which the tourist intends to visit. - The future of tourism is already visible in the present. - The New Age movement is gaining importance in tourism research. New Age tourism sheds a new light on the reasons why people travel to particular places. - The structure of holidays prevalent until recently is also changing. Nowadays, the so-called "short-break" holidays of 4-6 days have become dominant. - There are also changes in population trends in the European Union, which is home to most of the tourists visiting Croatia. The number of tourists in older age groups is increasing (more and more senior citizens are travelling). The projection of a new concept of tourism development is one of the challenges for the accelerated development of tourism in Croatia as a whole, and particularly in the continental parts of the country.

New Age tourism; continental Croatia; development

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