Acta turistica, Vol. 25 No. 1, 2013.
Original scientific paper
STAKEHOLDER SUPPORT FOR TOURISM DEVELOPMENT
Renata Tomljenović
orcid.org/0000-0003-4649-7916
; Institute for Tourism, Zagreb, Croatia
Snježana Boranić Živoder
; Institute for Tourism, Zagreb, Croatia
Zrinka Marušić
; Institute for Tourism, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Since early 1980s tourism planners have strongly advocated involvement of local stakeholders in tourism planning for, at least, three reasons: fi rstly, stakeholders are more likely to support public sector investment and private sectors projects if they support tourism development; secondly, stakeholders supporting tourism development are more willing to tolerate some of the negative impacts of tourism and, thirdly, they are more hospitable to tourists. The last aspect is important given that studies have shown that hospitable and friendly attitudes of locals contribute signifi cantly to overall tourist satisfaction. Thus, the tourism planning experts highlighted the need to monitor attitudes of local stakeholders in order to identify possible problems early and devise strategies that will minimize eventual confl icting situations that would, if left undetected, undermine support for destination development and destination appeal for visitors. Thus,
a research agenda based on, both, qualitative and quantitative surveys was devised and implemented, with an aim to ascertain community attitudes towards tourism and its future development. The research included attitudes of public sector stakeholders and tourism sector leaders and residents. The results of these surveys have dispelled some of the ‘illusions’ related to (un)desirable tourism development. Equally important, they advance the tourism planning research and methods as studies taking into account attitudes of variety of stakeholders based on representative samples of stakeholders’ population are rare.
Keywords
tourism planning; stakeholder management; advocacy groups; residents; government; tourism organization; attitudes to tourism
Hrčak ID:
114574
URI
Publication date:
1.1.2013.
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