Review article
https://doi.org/10.46458/27121097.2021.PI.9
THE NEEDS OF THE ELDERLY IN TOURISM AND THEIR POTENTIAL
Andrej Butorac
orcid.org/0000-0002-4816-929X
; Croatia Health Insurance Fund, Croatia
Abstract
Of all EU countries, Croatia has the largest share of tourism in GDP, which amounted to a high 24.3% in 2019 (statista.com, 2022). As the most important economic branch, it requires continuous monitoring of development and trends in order to remain in the focus of both current guests and attracting new ones. Along with the development of other types of tourism, the development of tourism for the elderly is attracting more and more attention. Assessing the needs of elderly people in tourism, their wishes and habits is the beginning for the analysis of the development of this type of tourism that has enormous potential. Touristic offers for the elderly must meet these needs, be focused on their requirements, and one of the most accurate ways to detect the above is to conduct a survey of desires and needs through a survey. In order to conduct the study, the survey and the interview method were used. The results speak about the habits, preferences and potential of senior tourism for the development of certain tourism branches, especially health tourism. The results of the survey show that the habits of today's elderly differ significantly from the habits of seniors of previous generations. Today's seniors want to travel more, have greater financial opportunities, better connections to destinations, and are more active. They mostly travel by car and bus, prefer the summer season, and their main motive is spending time with family. The main obstacles to travel are financial reasons, lack of time and health. The research shows the necessity of launching projects at the local and state level for the development of senior tourism in both directions. Primarily developing an offer that can strengthen the benefits of tourism, to some extent avoid seasonality, filling capacity outside the main season, while on the other hand it is necessary to encourage and to incite elderly to travel. For that purpose, launching social programs is necessary as it is shown that basic obstacle to traveling is that of a financial nature.
Keywords
active healthy aging; geriatric tourism; quality of life; medical tourism; health tourism;
Hrčak ID:
280183
URI
Publication date:
30.12.2021.
Visits: 1.080 *