Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
2000, 2002) little attention is paid to tourism
impact on the national economy.
Many European countries regard tourism
as a driving force for socio-economic develop-
ment. Tourism itself is, at the same time, a local
or community concern and a global pheno-
menon which reacts rapidly to changing circum-
stances at all levels of policy-making. In a world
of dynamic change one constant is that tourism
is an important human activity and an industry
that will continue to grow.
Experience has shown that managers,
academics and policy-makers must understand
both the changes taking place in a region and
the managerial reactions stemming from the
changing socio-economic environment. This
understanding must be reached both at national
and global scales. Political and managerial
lessons drawn from previous strategic and
operational experience can be shared between
various regions and enterprises. Private-public
partnership can be seen as a specific testimony
to the power of shared learning and regional
development as a factor in competitiveness in
the global tourism market. An innovative sys-
tem of education for the tourism sector is crucial
for this process.
poorly developed capacity to permit suc-
cessful management of the tourist economy
at local and regional levels; and
the need to better develop provision of tour-
ist information and marketing in tourism, at
both national and regional levels.
As by far the largest 2004 EU accession
state (see Table 1.1), Poland has a vast range of
resources and attractions which are clearly too
diverse to give justice to in this short piece.
Dawson (1991) provides an excellent overview
of Polish tourist sites and regions at the end of
the communist period. Natural attractions are
represented by five regions:
the Baltic coast, an area of sandy beaches
and coastal lagoons;
the
lowland
lake
districts
of
northern
Poland; and
the three upland regions of central Poland,
and the Sudeten and Carpathian moun-
tains of the south.
He noted that, representing what the
authorities considered was of value for Polish
children to learn in the 1980s, school text books
brought together, almost unwittingly, an excel-
lent introduction to the cultural and heritage
underpinnings for the country's tourism devel-
opment. These included historic cities such as
Kraków, shrines to the Christian faith, notably
the Black Madonna at Cz e stochowa, to national
figures, most outstandingly Chopin's house at
Z elazowa Wola, and to the victims of World
War II, most depressingly the concentration camp
at Oswi e cim (Auschwitz). Alongside these were
featured the spas of the Sudeten Mountains, ski-
ing resorts of the Carpathians, castles (Malbork)
and forest reserves (Bia^owie z a) 'as well as such
unlovely towns as Katowice and -ódz!' (Dawson,
1991). This was, of course, a long time ago.
Subsequently, Przezborska (2003; Hegarty
and Przezborska, 2005) has written on the grow-
ing role of rural tourism within the country. During
the 1990s, the Polish National Tourist Organiza-
tion together with expertise from the European
Union evaluated the potential of developing
unique Polish tourism products. Five segments
were identified that were considered sufficiently
competitive in European tourism markets:
Tourism Resources
Towards the late 1990s, after a spectacular
increase in international arrivals numbers and
receipts, Poland could be characterized by the
World Travel Organization (WTO) as 'a tourist
tiger' (Migdal, 1999). However, despite some
fluctuations, the overall trend in recent years
has been one of relative decline, and certainly
when compared to neighbouring 2004 EU
accession states. Factors appearing to constrain
growth
have
been
identified
to
include
(Go^embski, 1996):
insufficient political support for tourism
development, especially for new construc-
tion
and
modernization of
the
existing
infrastructure;
insufficient encouragement for foreign cap-
ital investment in tourism, or the creation
of equal investment opportunities for both
home and foreign capital;
city and cultural tourism;
active tourism;
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