engleski

Sustainable Rural Tourism Development – Tourists’ Satisfaction with Istria as a Rural Holiday Destination

In the past years rural areas have experienced major economic and social changes, these areas are characterized by demographic problems and by the abandonment of traditional economic activities. Rural tourism has been seen as a way that could be beneficial for profitability, revitalization and for living social environment. This could be the case only if rural tourism is planned in a sustainable way. The aim of such sustainable development is to minimise environmental and cultural damage, optimise visitor satisfaction and maximise future economic development. This paper deals with tourists’ satisfaction with different rural destinations’ attributes. The method used consisted of a questionnaire distributed among tourists who are visiting rural parts of Istria. This research aimed to analyze level of satisfaction regarding different elements of Istrian rural tourism offer. The second aim was to identify is there a significant difference between satisfaction with different tourism offer elements and importance that tourist gave to those elements through importance-performance analysis, where satisfaction has been examined across 25 destination’s attributes. The results can be considered as a guideline for tourism sector in enhancing service quality and customer satisfaction since greater understanding of the tourists’ satisfaction with the rural tourism products may improve planning of development of these products.

rural tourism; sustainable development; tourists’ satisfaction; Istria

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