engleski

Application of sustainability principles in winter sports tourism

Winter sports tourism is currently facing many challenges in its development. These challenges can be summarized into two basic ones. The first one includes the problem of saturation which is the consequence of a great boom in the development of skiing centres in the 1960s. The second challenge refers to the climate change problems that affect the sureness of snow which the development of winter sports tourism actually depends on. The previously mentioned problems, as well as the concern for the future, imply the need for the application of the sustainability principles in the tourism development in these destinations. Although the term sustainable development is an indispensable part of the development plans in general, as well as tourism development plans in almost every country of the world, and although it is theoretically a well advanced area of research, the question of the applicability of these principles in practice still remains unanswered. In this sense, a research problem of this paper is the acquaintance of decision makers in winter sports destinations with the term sustainable development, i.e. are the sustainability principles applied in the development of these destinations? For that purpose, a research in winter sports centres of Austria and Slovenia has been conducted. The results show that less than a half of the destinations involved in the research were familiar with this term, and in their development (plans) they are usually concerned with the economic impacts.

sustainable development; sustainability principles; winter sports destinations

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