Attitudes of Local Population of Tourism Impacts on Destination Sustainability ? Case of Croatia

Space as a resource is intensively used both by the tourism and the local community. Therefore the state of the tourism development must be measured trough time, along with attitudes of local population, to determine the impacts and the pressure that can continues tourism development cause. In the 1990s, tourism become the motor of the development of Croatia, which has resulted in continues increase of the number of tourist beds. On the other hand population of the Croatia is experiencing the demographic extinction. To explain pressures of the tourism development on the decreasing community, tourism function index was used in comparison with the research of the attitudes of local population considering tourism impacts. The main objective of this paper is to determine the correlation between the increase in the number of tourists and changes in the life of local population, which arises from the tourism activities in destinations, as well as from the ratio of the number of residents and tourists. The attitudes analysis has shown high level of the negative impacts of tourism in seven Adriatic counties, while in continental parts of Croatia tourism is seen as an activity with mostly positive effects. Still tourism has generally positive impact on the destination and is seen as desirable activity, even in areas with relatively high tourism function index. Accordingly, to enhance the positive impacts it is essential to diminish extremely big differences in tourism development between too developed coastal areas and mainly neglected continental part of the country and to reduce seasonality of tourism, trough sustainable management and diversification of tourism offer in accordance with spatial disparities.