Search results

This study aims to explore the phenomenon of sentimental tourism in Central-Eastern Europe, which is travels to places related to people’s past or their country’s past for sentimental reasons with reference to disruptive historical events (e.g. border changes and lost territories), and identify different segments within sentimental tourists.

A survey was conducted with 400 Polish sentimental tourists to compare their attitudes and behaviour when visiting a “lost” land by age and family roots. Independent samples t-tests and analysis of variance were conducted to compare the views of sentimental tourists by Borderland origin. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to identify the underlying dimensions of destination performance. Cluster analysis was conducted to classify tourists into segments based on their perception of destination performance.

This study analysed the attitude and behaviour of sentimental tourists by age and family roots. Some significant differences were revealed in the purpose of trip, interest in heritage attractions and perception of destination performance across different groups. The study also identifies key factors of destination performance: accessibility, sentiment and infrastructure and security. Based on factor and cluster analyses, Polish sentimental tourists were divided into three types of connections: personally attached older sentimental tourists, cognitively attached younger sentimental tourists and tourists with general interests.

Different from roots tourism, sentimental tourism is unique in including tourists without personal roots but feels sentimental towards the destination based on the shared heritage of lost territories. This study shows how sentimental tourists attach to a lost land that used to belong to their country and how different perceptions of the destination have roots and non-roots tourists. Sentimental tourism in Central Europe provides a new perspective to consider the relationship between tourists and heritage places as well as tourist segmentation.

本研究旨在探讨中东欧的感伤旅游现象, 即由于破坏性历史事件 (例如国界变化、失去领土), 出于感伤原因前往与个人过去或国家过去相关的地方旅游, 并试图分辨感伤旅游游客中的细分市场。

本研究对 400 名波兰感伤旅游游客进行问券调查, 比较年龄和家庭根源不同的游客, 在游历“失落”土地时的态度和行为。本研究使用独立样本 t 检验和 ANOVA, 按年龄和是否Borderland出身的不同来比较感伤旅游游客的观点。接着进行探索性因素分析以确定目的地表现的潜在维度, 并进行聚类分析以根据游客对目的地表现的感知将其分类。

本研究按年龄和家庭根源 (是否Borderland出身) 分析了感伤旅游游客的态度和行为。不同群体在旅行目的、对遗产景点的兴趣以及对目的地表现的看法方面存在一些显着差异。本研究还确定了感伤旅游目的地表现的三个关键因素：可及性、感伤情绪以及基础设施和安全性。基于因子和聚类分析, 波兰感伤旅游者被划分为三种类型：个人依恋的老年感伤游客、认知依恋的年轻感伤游客和具有普遍兴趣的年轻游客。

与寻根旅游不同, 感伤旅游的独特之处在于包括与目的地没有个人或家族根源, 但基于“失落”土地的共同遗产而对目的地感到感伤的游客。这项研究显示了感伤旅游游客如何依附于曾经属于他们国家的失落土地, 以及同根源游客和非同根源游客对目的地的不同看法。中欧的感伤旅游通过游客细分及比较根源和非根源游客提供了一个新的视角来考虑游客与遗产地之间的关系。

Este estudio pretende explorar el fenómeno del turismo sentimental en Europa Central y Oriental, que consiste en viajar a lugares relacionados con el pasado de las personas o de su país por motivos sentimentales en referencia a acontecimientos históricos perturbadores (por ejemplo, cambios fronterizos, territorios perdidos), e identificar diferentes segmentos dentro de los turistas sentimentales.

Se realizó una encuesta a 400 turistas sentimentales polacos para comparar sus actitudes y comportamientos al visitar una tierra “perdida” según la edad y las raíces familiares. Se realizaron pruebas t de muestras independientes y ANOVA para comparar las opiniones de los turistas sentimentales por edad y origen fronterizo. Se aplicó un análisis factorial exploratorio para identificar las dimensiones subyacentes del funcionamiento del destino. Se aplicó un análisis de conglomerados para clasificar a los turistas en segmentos en base a su percepción del funcionamiento del destino.

Este estudio analizó la actitud y el comportamiento de los turistas sentimentales en función de la edad y los arraigos o raíces familiares. Se revelaron algunas diferencias significativas en el motivo del viaje, el interés por las atracciones patrimoniales y la percepción de los resultados del destino entre los distintos grupos. El estudio también identifica tres factores clave del “funcionamiento” de los destinos: la accesibilidad, el sentimiento y las infraestructuras y la seguridad. Basándose en análisis factoriales y de conglomerados, los turistas sentimentales polacos se dividieron en tres tipos de vinculaciones: los turistas sentimentales de más edad vinculados personalmente, los turistas sentimentales más jóvenes vinculados cognitivamente y los turistas con interese generales.

A diferencia del turismo de raíces, el turismo sentimental es único al incluir a turistas sin arraigos personales pero que sienten un sentimiento hacia el destino basado en la herencia compartida de territorios perdidos. Este estudio muestra el apego de los turistas sentimentales a una tierra perdida que solía pertenecer a su país y la diferente percepción del destino que tienen los turistas de raíces y los que no lo son. El turismo sentimental en Europa Central ofrece una nueva perspectiva para considerar la relación entre los turistas y los lugares patrimoniales, así como la segmentación turística a través de la comparación de los turistas de raíces y los que no lo son.

A significant sector of the international tourism industry focusses on the natural and cultural attributes of target destinations and sites. The more natural and unusual the attraction the greater the value to the industry and hence the greater the promotion of the venue. However, this pattern of exploitation could prove to be a short cut to actually degrading the object of attraction and hence its pulling power.

Sports tourism has gained much attention in recent decades due to its socio-economic and environmental impact on destinations. This study at first examines travel motives that might trigger participation in active sports tourism (AST). Further, it compares these travel motives and their impact on participation intention in AST (between India and Poland).

Data were collected online through a self-administered questionnaire in both countries (N = 273 in India and N = 255 in Poland). Descriptive data were analyzed using SPSS statistics 24, and SPSS AMOS 25 was used for testing the measurement model and multi-group analysis.

The results show that in both countries, participants are motivated mainly by travel exploration, social bonding, and stress relief, which are the primary travel motives commonly associated with tourism. However, the significance of these motives varies across both nations. Interestingly, active sports tourists are not motivated by physical strength, self-enhancement, and social recognition.

The study presents a framework to discuss travel motives in Active Sports Tourism (AST). It also describes the motives that influence Indians and Polish citizens' participation in active sports tourism.

The purpose of this paper is to identify tourist activity inhibitors (causes of non‐participation in tourism), assess their impact strength and analyze the social disproportion and exclusion in terms of tourism participation. The paper also presents the deficiencies in the research methods and proposes modifications that pertain to method and terms.

Empirical studies pertain to Polish residents' leisure trips in 2005. The sample (1,026 persons) fulfills the requirements for the general Polish population, aged 15 years and older. The statistical methods used were the χ² test, the tau B‐Kendall rank correlation coefficient, factor analysis, cluster analysis, and ANOVA. The analyses include the top ten reasons for non‐participation in leisure trips, and are divided on the basis of the length of such trips (longer than seven days and shorter than seven days).

The research reveals great social diversity in tourism, which results from numerous interdependent factors. However, both the standards and the attributes of tourist activity are a measure of social diversification and exclusion rather than their cause. The analyses that this research carries out indicate the existence of deficiencies in terms of methodology employed in the identification of causes of not participating in tourism. These deficiencies pertain mainly to the randomness of inhibitor selection by different authors and various institutions for this particular activity. Subsequently this situation creates an obstacle when comparing results of studies. Another issue deals with the quite vague distribution of causes in the surveys, which on the other hand prevent respondents from giving clear answers. The cluster analysis carried out for trips lasting a week or longer reveals that the first cluster (60 percent) is the most uniform, being made up of people who most often lack money, and seldom mention the other inhibitors. The second cluster (20 percent) is much more diverse, and consists of people who often indicate a few factors – lack of money, lack of time, household obligations, and spending vacations in their place of residence.

Empirical studies were carried out exclusively among Polish residents and included only leisure trips.

Research that diagnoses and partially forecasts the standards and attributes of tourist activity serves as a foundation to support the functioning of the entire tourist industry. The practical significance of this research is determined by the fact that people are constantly seeking to increase the demand for tourist products.

Knowledge about people not participating in tourism is insignificant. This article pertains to the above‐mentioned group of people, focusing especially on the causes of non‐participation. It presents a critical analysis of studies and points out the diversity and inconsistencies in methodology. Problems of the lack of participation in tourism and social exclusion apply to social sciences, especially sociology and economy.

The Polish–Slovak borderland is a mountainous area with extraordinary natural conditions for tourism development. The main aim of this chapter is to analyze theoretical aspects of a relationship between transport and tourism and to assess selected changes in cross-border transport that have influenced tourism in Polish–Slovak tourism regions. We have tried to answer the questions on changes in transport infrastructure (based on the analysis of the cross-border projects) and public transport (based on the analysis of timetables of the cross-border public transport connections) in the borderland during the last 30 years and to answer the question whether these changes are in accordance with the sustainable development goals. The Polish–Slovak border is seen as a barrier to transport. The increasing cross-border movement of people and goods through Polish–Slovak border after 1989 required the opening of new border crossings and the construction of new cross-border transport infrastructure. Investments to the road infrastructure have led to using of individual automobile transport. Public transport is currently of marginal importance in cross-border transport. The three cross-border rail lines are in poor technical condition, and plans for their modernization are uncertain. Bus transport has been limited on two tourist-oriented lines in the central part of the borderland. In terms of the structure of the use of means of transport, therefore, no change in trends should be expected and most of the incoming people will continue to cross the Polish–Slovak border by their own means of communication. What is worrying, in the future, in the absence of modernization of the railway infrastructure and no organizational measures, there will be a further decline in the importance of public transport in relation to individual road transport.

The purpose of this paper is to present the changes in political and socioeconomic conditions after 25 years of transformation and how it provided to adopt new methodology in tourism planning. It shows the possibilities offered by the use of the foresight process in planning the development of tourism in Poland. Since one of the main foresight goals is to identify trends, the paper takes attempt to verify trends that occurred in Poland after 1989 and if they have now and will have in the near future influence on Polish tourism. Detailed objective is to characterize the systemic transformation and its impact on the tourism economy.

Paper is the review, which used literature, legislation and strategic documents query. It also includes comparative analysis.

The analysis of the political and economic changes that have taken place in Poland over the last 25 years shows that they were positive for the development of tourism base. The impact of globalization and global trends is now clearly noticeable also in Poland. Political and economic changes allow the use of foresight methodology in studies on the future of tourism while maintaining its main attributes: anticipation, participation, action, networking, vision.

The analysis included the impact of political changes and social trends on the tourist economy. Proposals that show the positive aspects of these changes relate to tourism and present extensive opportunities to create scenarios, both at the national and regional levels.

The analysis forms the basis for the activities of tourism entities in Poland. It shows the characteristics for the future of the tourism market particularly the demand side.

The analysis of changes in systemic and social trends enables anticipation of changes in tourism as a social phenomenon.

The paper presents the historical basis for the development of tourism in Poland after political changes in relation to the planning of tourism by using the methodology of foresight. It also presents these phenomena and social trends that have an impact on the development of tourism.

Much attention has of late been paid to the issue of tourist sustainable ­mobility at the destination. This issue takes on particular significance in big cities, which, prior to the outbreak of the pandemic, saw considerable increases in visitor numbers. The aim of this chapter, which draws on the case study method, is to explore the question of how foreign tourists move around in a Polish conurbation, known as Tri-city. Made up of three cities – Gdansk, Sopot, and Gdynia – it is one of Poland’s most popular tourist destinations. Crucially, in Tri-city all major tourist attractions and facilities are dispersed over a wide area, which makes it particularly well suited to researching visitor mobility patterns. The case study that forms the core of this chapter relies mainly on a paper-and-pencil questionnaire survey conducted among foreign tourists visiting Tri-city in January 2020 as well as on direct observation of reality. It turned out that walking was a preferred way of moving around Tri-city for most foreigners. The findings indicate, too, that young female visitors used public transport more often than older women and all men regardless of age. Furthermore, tourists with a university education more often opted for public transport than those without a degree, and visitors who lived in urban areas used public transport more often than those living in the countryside. The chapter concludes by ­summarizing the argument and drawing practical lessons for municipal authorities interested in facilitating tourist sustainability in their cities.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the evaluations of various risks by young Israelis living in conflict area and their Polish counterparts, who do not live in conflict area and how these perceptions affect their traveling intentions to destinations with different types of risks – Egypt, Turkey, India and Japan.

The research participants were 713 Israeli and Polish students who responded to a structured questionnaire.

The findings validate the assumption that contextual distinctions shape differently factors affecting traveling risk estimation and the intention of young people to travel abroad. The results indicated that the priming effect is substantial, reflected in Israelis’ significantly higher assessments of risks concerning destinations with terror, health and natural disasters hazards in comparison to Poles’ evaluations. As predicted, Israeli students exhibit lesser intentions to travel to Turkey, Egypt and India than their Polish counterparts. The study also showed similarities between Israeli and Polish students. Young tourists’ with strong aversion to health hazards exhibit low intention to travel to India and those refraining from economic crisis are reluctant to travel to Egypt. The intention to travel to Japan and India decreased with high perception of destination risks.

The current study constitutes a new departure in studying the contextual effects on travel-related decision making. It focusses on the impact of conflict ridden environment on intentions, attitudes and risks perception of young tourists with respect to traveling to risky destinations, previously hardly studied.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on social representations of Warsaw (Poland) as a tourist destination of 210 first visitors from seven EU and extra-EU countries (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, United Kingdom and United States of America) interviewed before and after their visit. In the framework of the social representations theory, the “cultural baggage”, rooted in the collective and social memory, forms anticipatory representations of the imagined places that may undergo transformations after the visit. How does this transformation occur?

The authors consider the transformation of social representations as detected by means of a self-administered questionnaire that comprised the following tools: scales to measure the strength of various information sources about Warsaw (school, literature, movies, songs, internet, press, tourist guides, documentaries, interpersonal communication and other); associative networks (de Rosa, 2002) with the stimulus word “Warsaw”; a list of adjectives describing the city and its centre, as well as a list of the most important places in Warsaw. The questionnaires were coded to ensure anonymity of participants while enabling the researcher to administer them for the second time (after the visit). According to the modelling approach to social representations (de Rosa, 2013a), the research was guided by three related hypotheses concerning transformation of social representations of Warsaw.

The results confirmed the hypotheses of potential changes in the representations that shift the focus from Warsaw as “communist” to “green” capital city, and of the role of the Polish language as a “communicative barrier” for recalling specific names of city-places after their visit.

Social representations exist in people’s minds, and they include images that are further interpreted (Howarth, 2011). Especially when visitors are asked about places, it is likely that they recall specific images, but not their names. Since the questionnaires required them to write down the answers, words often did not correspond to the volatile and dynamic images that the human mind creates. In spite of recalling a specific park or fountain, participants resorted to general categories and simply wrote “park” or “fountain”. However, this limitation is familiar to the majority of social psychological researchers and very difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. The new research directions launched to integrate the research line of field studies with investigations based on new media offer complementary insights and opportunities (de Rosa and Bocci, 2014).

Destination branding has numerous practical implications. According to Ekinci and Hosany (2006), developing efficient communication methods is crucial to launching a distinctive and attractive destination personality. Hosany et al. (2006) have demonstrated that personality traits are ubiquitous in consumers’ evaluations of tourism destinations and therefore promotional campaigns should emphasize the distinctive personality of tourism destinations, based on the emotional components of destination image. European capital cities compete for visitors in the mature and saturated market, where brand strength is positively related to tourism intensity (Mikulić et al., 2016).

Examining how social representations of a city are transformed by the visit from the perspective of the supra-disciplinary theory of Moscovici constitutes an original way to link imagery and tourist practices. The major cultural issues, such as history, language, art and traditions affect the theory and practice of urban tourism. For the first time, this theoretical framework is being used in case of a post-communist European destination such as Warsaw.

The economies of the former Soviet Union satellite countries have had to evolve during the past decade. Recent changes in the business environment of a transforming Polish economy have made entrepreneurial behaviors acceptable and thus have promoted the founding of new ventures. The private sector in Poland has proven to be one of the key mechanisms in achieving success in the transition of the economy. This study presents interviews conducted with entrepreneurs involved in tourism and hospitality. The major characteristics of the Polish tourism and hospitality industry are examined, and the difficulties that confront these small businesses are identified.