engleski

Beyond the Food and Drinking Demand for Tourist Visits in Istria : a Cluster Analysis of Visitro Spending

Food is frequently seen as an emblem or a symbol of local distinctiveness, and when tourists choose local food and beverages they literally taste elements of the visited area's local character. In numerous tourism regions the local gastronomy is thus seen as a crucial part of the local heritage. The paper explores the possible contribution of local food and culinary traditions in Istria County as an attraction to tourists and, in turn, the meaning, and significance that this social construction may have. Consequently, food in Istria as in Croatia is considered as a vital part of the tourist experiences in numerous contexts. Moreover, the paper investigates various food interests of foreign tourists in Istria applying cluster analysis, implying data from the visitor survey. Cluster analysis is an exploratory data analysis tool for solving classification problems. Its object in this paper is to sort various visitors that form demand of local gastronomy into groups, or clusters, so that the degree of association is strong between members of the same cluster and weak between members of different clusters. Each cluster thus describes, in terms of the data collected, the class to which the members belong and in that way it has established a relatively homogenous group of restaurant visitors.

demand; local food; spending; attraction; Istria; cluster analysis

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