engleski

Methodology of planning sustainable tourism development at the local level: theory and practice

The purpose of this paper is to establish how and to what extent local self- governments(towns) in tourism destinations are involved in sustainable development. The aim is to identify the types of activities undertaken by local self-government units to promote sustainable development and the main problems they are faced with in undertaking and implementing these activities. The paper also investigates whether the towns possess plans containing activities for promoting sustainable development, whether they have defined indicators to measure progress in sustainable growth and whether they use them, whether they have made the necessary organisational adjustments to planning and promoting sustainable development and whether they are equally concerned with ecological, economic and socio-cultural sustainability. Two primary studies were conducted, one on a sample of experts on sustainable development and/or tourism and the other on a sample of towns in Croatian coastal counties. The study shows that local self- governments fail to fully recognise their role in planning and promoting sustainable development in destinations. Research results were used to draw conclusions and put forward proposals to improve sustainable development planning and promotion in destinations. Considering that no similar studies of the role of local self-government in planning and promoting sustainable development (in regions that are also tourist destinations) have been conducted, this paper aims to contribute to practical application in destinations and open up the way for future research on a topic that combines local self- government, tourism and sustainable development, about which there are still too few papers in the recent literature

sustainable development ; tourism ; tourist destination ; local self-government ; planning

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