engleski

Istria’ s tourists’ animation and sport preferences with a special view on rural areas

The development and improvement of the tourist offer of Istria as a tourist destination has to be based on the process of following the modern trends in tourism demand through the enrichment of the tourist offer and diversified contents (concerning both accommodation and the offer not included in the accommodation service already paid for). In this process it is important to properly detect tourists’ interests and evaluate the tourism demand trends through which such interests appear. For the purposes of an empirical measurement of the interests and preferences of the people on vacation in the tourist destination of Istria, it was necessary to conduct a research among the tourists. The object of this paper is to present the results of the survey carried out during the tourist season 2008 in various places on the Istrian coast, with 1326 interviewees who were staying at 3- and 4-star hotels and at 3-star tourist villages and camping sites. The research took place on two separate occasions, the first time in August 2008 and afterwards in September of the same year, and 30 accommodation facilities were involved. As far as the structure of the facilities is concerned, there are 21 hotels (of which 14 3-star hotels and 7 4-star hotels), 3 tourist villages (2 3-star and 1 4-star) and 6 3-star camping sites. This paper examines the interests and preferences of guests on vacation in Istria regarding their sources of information on animation and sport programmes offer, as well as on the related types of content (animation and sport) guests usually choose. The intention of the authors of the present paper is to point put the role of animation and sport in enriching the tourist offer of the destination of Istria. According to the authors, the results of this study should serve all people potentially involved in the tourist offer of Istria as a reliable basis for enriching the offer of animation and sport contents, as well as for creating new offer types of sport tourism in the rural areas of Istria by exploiting the existing natural resources of the same areas, in order to satisfy as much as possible guests’ preferences.

tourist offer; Istria; empirical research; animation; sport; tourist preferences

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