engleski

Nature and tourism in the Zadar County area

At times when uncontrolled overuse of natural resources results in deteriorating environment, trends in the world tourist market show that intact nature attracts more and more tourists every year. The basic aim of the implemented research was to determine the role of nature in tourism in the Zadar County area. Zadar county is situated in the central part of the Croatian Adriatic coast and surface of 3.641, 91 km2. It abounds with diverse geomorphological entireties, in geo-pedologic structure terra rosa predominateson limestone and dolomite, brown soil on limestone and rendzine (Vranković 1985). According to the Köppen climate classification, it is located in the Csa climate zone marked as the “climate of olive”, characterized by mild winters and hot summers. According to the date of the Hydrometeorological Institute of Republic of Croatia for the period of 1971 – 2000 the average annual temperature was 14, 9 *C. The annual precipitation was 879, 2 mm/ m2 . In the phytogeographic aspect, the area inheres to the mediterranean-littoral and the mediterranean-mountain vegetation zone (Trinajstić et al. 1992). Zadar County has an abundancy of protected natural areas. According to the Nature Protection Legislation (NN 70/05) the highest level of protection applies to the following: Paklenica National Park, Telašćica Nature Reserve, Lake Vransko Nature Reserve and Velebit Nature Reserve (partly located in Zadar County). The field research was implemented during the summer 2006 in four chosen tourist accommodation destinations - Hotel Alan, Starigrad-Paklenica: Tourist village Zaton, Zaton ; Tourist village Crvena Luka, Biograd n/m and Hotel Kolovare, Zadar - with the representative tourist traffic for Zadar County and being in the near from a national park or park of nature. Tourists independently filled in the questionnaire. Filled in number of surveys in chosen accommodation objects and language groups are 260. The questionnaire is composed into four theme units: socio-demographic profile, attitude towards nature, motivation for visit and satisfaction with the tourist offer of the Zadar County. What do people want to get acquanied with in a tourist destination? Frequency of arrivals in Zadar county? Accomodation object? Information source? The importance of nature during vacation in Zadar County? The attractiveness of nature? The validity of the sample was tested by the amount (1% of the average annual number of tourist arrivals) and the structure of the sample. Data were processed according to theme units and considering the country of permanent residency, age and occupation. The analysis was implemented by the method of descriptive statistics and the help of the programme package Statistica 7, 0 for the Windows. The intervals of reliability were calculated to 95% for all proportion evaluations. Research results indicated that the largest number of tourists from Italy ; 44 % women and 56 % men ; age between 36 and 45 ; domination of family visits (63 %). Natural beauty is what attracts the majority of those who visit Zadar County (68%) and (53%) of tourists come to visit protected natural objects. Of all the tourist attractions most of the tourists value natural beauty along with the environmental preservation (marked 4.14 on the scale from 1 to 5, 1-worst, 5-best). Tourists return to destinations offering complete adventure. The largest number of visits: Paklenica National Park. This research compared with similar researches in Zadar County (Weber, Marušić et al. 2002, Čorak, Marušić et al. 2005) which were implemented in the period between 1987 and 2004 as part of the programme “Tomas-attitudes and the expenditures of tourists in Croatia”. Also this research is the basis for the exploration of preserving protected natural areas by creating a long-term development strategy and regulating measures withing a well-balanced development of turist industry.

nature ; environmental preservation ; tourism

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