Sustainable tourism: tourists’ behaviour and their impact on the visited place

Keywords: sustainable tourism, overtourism, tourist’s behaviour, tourism impacts, survey

Abstract

With part of society growing rich, ease of movement around the world, cheaper airline tickets, and big competition on the websites that offer accommodation, tourism is becoming more and more popular. Many places are becoming a destination for tourists, not only because of their tourist values but more often because of fashion. This, unfortunately, is associated with the increasing overcrowding in such places, and thus with the occurrence of the phenomenon termed overtourism. The salvation for such places is the attempts to incorporate the concepts of sustainable tourism into their operation. However, for this to be successful, tourists also need to understand the need for such activities, otherwise, it will be hard to do anything. The aim of this paper was to assess the attitudes of people in different regions of Europe towards sustainable tourism, with the emphasis on understanding the concept and using it in their travels. The survey was conducted in the form of an online questionnaire filled in by the residents of the countries of the Visegrád Group. The survey is part of a larger project on sustainable tourism and people's perceptions of this tourism in Europe. The results of the survey showed that the respondents understand what the concept of sustainable tourism means and what its assumptions are. However, this often does not translate into their behavior and using these assumptions in their lives as tourists. Conducting similar research, however, can inspire respondents to rethink and change their behavior.

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Published
2021-09-07
Section
Original Papers