TOURISM INDUSTRY
REGIONAL ASPECTS
prof.PhDr.Karel Lacina, DrSc.
Vysoká škola finanční
a správní
STRUCTURE OF LECTURE
1. ROLE OF REGIONS IN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL
AFFAIRS
2. PRINCIPAL TOURISM ACTIVITIES IN REGIONS
3. MAIN ORIENTATION OF REGIONAL TOURISM
STRATEGIES
4. ROLE OF INVESTMENTS INTO TOURISM
ACTIVITIES
5. WEAKNESS OF VILLAGES REGIONS
6. CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF VILLAGES
TOURISM
7. MAIN FORMS OF VILLAGES TOURISM
1. ROLE OF REGIONS IN ECONOMIC
AND SOCIAL AFFAIRS
The role of regions in the economic and
social affairs including the tourism industry
is increasing in Europe and Northern American
countries mainly during the last fifty years.
The indicated trend is connected in the
European continent - among others - with
the administration reforms, first of all with
the decentralization, deconcentration and
subsidiarity principles implementation. One
of its results became the creation of regional
state administration and the local government
that did not exist de facto before the beginning
of reform activities in many European countries.
This trend was partly reflected in the
sphere of tourism activities.The tourism
industry contributes now more or less
effectively to the economic and social
development of the whole regions
predominantly thanks to the generation
of money from products and services
purchase to tourists and to the creation
of new labour places.
The regional dimension of tourism
activities is underlined by the fact that
they are developing in concrete regions,
microregions and in the territory
of municipalites. Those territories,
of course, differ what concerns their
attractivities.
Everybody knows that there are regions
suitable for tourism and other which are
visited by tourists only in a relatively limited
moments. Pardubice region in Eastern
Bohemia, for example, could be mentioned
as an example of the second group of regions.
Nevertheless, tourism activities represent
in such a way important challenges from the
point of view of their economic and social
development especially for regions with prevailing
agrarian economy. Different forms of tourism
are developed in agrarian regions based mainly
on the villages tourism activities.
The experience of countries with rich traditions
of tourism industry confirms the fact that tourism
activities are successfully developed predominantly
in territories where elected representatives closely
cooperate with the Small and Medium-sized
Enterprices owners and managers.
Taking this fact into account strategies
worked out for tourism can be formulated
nowadays as the component parts of their
broadely outlined strategies in the majority
of regions.
2. PRINCIPAL TOURISM ACTIVITIES
IN REGIONS
The mentioned activities in regions are
concentrated predominantly to:
1. Investments into the construction of accomodation
facilities,the purchase of modern transport means
and in the construction of highways and other roads
communications.
2. The strengthening of cooperation among
entrepreneurs, local government and the
public administration authorities and offices
based on the principle of partnership and
networking represented by the destination
management. This orientation is positively
reflected - among others - in the creation
of specific tourism industry strategies in the
tourism destinations.
3. The new labour places creation in the tourism
industry facilities.
4. The improvement of cultural monuments
protection situated in regions and
simultaneously of the educational level
of the local inhabitants increasing.
The effectiveness of indicated strategies
and their contribution to the regional development
was confirmed first of all in Spain, Portugal, Italy
and Greece.
3.MAIN ORIENTATION OF REGIONAL
TOURISM STRATEGIES
Regional tourism strategies are oriented
predominantly to:
1. The improvement of the tourism industry
infrastructure:
with the emphasis on the accomodation and
gastronomy facilities, camps and the information
charts construction, the cultural, entertainment
and sport infrastructure, bikeroutes and water
activities spaces, cars and buses parking areas,
technical information systems as well as ski
routes quality improvement.
2. Regional tourism industry organization
structure building and its quality improvement
with the principal orientation to the regional and
local tourism organizations network stabilization
and the regional information centers activities
development.
3. Efforts aimed at the tourism destinations
image increasing:
The orientation to the long-term marketing
activities improvement aimed at the regions
effective propagation seems to be the way
of the mentioned goal implementation. The
similar significance has the education and
training of the tourism industry facilities
staff.
4. The support of cultural and natural inheritance
regeneration.
4. ROLE OF INVESTMENTS
INTO TOURISM ACTIVITIES
The investments into tourism industry represent
the significant contribution to the economic and
social development especially in the agricultural
regions.
That is why the European Union and its
individual member states support different
projects contributing, among other, to the
diminishing of disparities among more and less
developed regions.The mentioned orientation:
a) allows to accumulate money in regions that
have in general a lower economic potential;
b) it represents one of the way leading not only
to the economic but also to the social
stabilization of those areas.
The EU strategy utilizing financial means from
the structural and national funds to investments
takes into account - among others - the real fact
that the European village regions are in a relatively
complicated stage of their development for the
longer time.
There are two urgent problems which have
to be solved in the those regions. The first one
is connected with the restriction of agricultural
production area in localities where it represented
relatively recently the main or extremely significant
sphere of economic activities.
The second problem - connected immediately
with the first one - is the fact that the number of
people living in the villages is somewhere (from
different reasons) dramatically reducing.
5.WEAKNESS OF MOST VILLAGES
REGIONS
The weakness of the most villages regions
is represented generally by:
- their unsufficient infrastructure;
- the low level of capital;
- the complicated access of entrepreneurs to credits;
- the relatively long geographic distance
of classical agricultural areas from main
regional economic centres;
- the relatively high costs of transport connected
with the purchase and sale of products.
Speaking more concretely this indicated
unpleasant situation of villages regions was
caused predominantly by the following facts:
a) there are often limited transportation connection
possibilities
complicating the everyday transport of people
from small villages to larger centres offering
labour possibilities. The mentioned situation
is criticized for a long time especially by the
young people moving more and more often
to towns;
b) lower quality of roads maintenance is also
complicating the situation;
c) there is a limited number of créches, nursery
and the elementary and secondary schools;
d) the medical care quality is often limited there
in the comparison with towns;
e) only limited number of services is offered
to citizens in smaller municipalities;
f) the village areas are able to create limited
number of labour places for their inhabitants.
These and other problems are motivating inhabitants
of villages to their migration to towns with much
higher quality conditions of the everyday life.
The fact that limited number of inhabitants lives
predominantly in the mountain areas is negatively
reflected also in the worse quality of soil cultivation.
The space for eco-agrotourism is offered by
the growing number of bio farms that do not use
fertilizers in their plants growing. The cows,
sheeps, goats and horses are breeded in the
traditional natural way here.
The mentioned style of agricultural production
is considered to be very attractive by the ecoagrotourism
participants.
7. CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES
OF VILLAGES TOURISM
The attractiveness of the indicated characteristic
features of the village tourism are caused by:
- its more sensitive relationship to the nature;
- limited (therefore more intimate) accomodation
capacities;
- offer of pleasant environment of farms and small
boarding houses;
- more better approach of services producers
to visitors individual needssatisfaction;
- additional services provision (for example for
horse riding,hunting, fishing);
- the posibility of local traditions, handicrafts,
ways of soil cultivation recognition.
In other words tourism activities in villages
areas:
- provide the possibility of recreation in the healthy
and nontraditional environment;
- assure additional incomes for farmers and the
assistance to villages stabilization in such
a way;
- enable the folk architecture conservation together
with folk traditions preservation;
- stimulate global villages development and protect
the traditions of villages style of life.
The modern forms of tourism activities agrotourism,
ecotourism and eco-agrotourism offer
new labour places for the local population.
They represent the realistic contribution to the
regions development because more and more
tourists visiting village areas estimate
predominantly:
- the local healthy environment;
- the natural and historical monuments
situated here.
Their number is increasing relatively quickly.
It is possible to come to the conclusion that the
agrotourism, ecotourism and eco-agrotourism
represent the successful economic and social
orientation mainly in municipalities where the
principle Public-Private-Partnership is developed.
The local entrepreneurs are building new
accomodation and catering capacities and the
local government is helping them by the
construction of technical infrastructure and
information centres as well as by the activation
of the cross border cooperation implemented
predominantly in the territory of the so called
euroregions.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH
FOR YOUR ATTENTION