The purpose of this paper is to indicate that in today's circumstances of time and space compression, diversification of the tourism product, and diversity and multiplicity of tourist experiences, it is necessary to move away from the traditional typologically rigid and narrow theoretical framework towards more flexible conceptualisations. The paper brings a theoretical overview of theorists who have been meritorious for such a shift of opinion and associated with the emergence of the postmodern thought in the contemporary tourism theory.The abandonment of tourist typologies, the shift of attention towards the existential authenticity, and the admittance that tourism is a multisensory and physical experience bear witness to the recent theoretical shift in the study of the tourist experience which stresses the importance of the individual and his/her role in the tourist industry. New forms of tourism have been emerging, which have the potential to replace or at least change the already existing forms and fundamental tourism structures. A new type of tourism demand has significantly changed the nature of tourism offer. The alterations in the tourism offer and demand and the mere nature of the tourism product are usually associated with the concept of the post-tourist. By focusing on the effects of increasing mobilities of people and objects and new ways of sensing a touristic world, this work is a contribution to new directions in tourism analysis providing an account of various tourists' performances that help to constitute tourist destinations.
An excessive increase of tourism capacities at the expense of living space and the normal way of life of the local population has been the dominant feature of Croatian tourism development for the last decade. Croatian tourism is all about income generated from tourism development and it is impossible to find any information related to expenses generated by tourism. Without a clever approach to these issues the real price could be paid in the years to come. The construction of newer and newer rooms, apartments and holiday houses disfigures our settlements and environments and contributes to the inflow of tourists, which in turn leads to less interest, less attractivity and, consequently, a fall in prices of goods and services. Under such circumstances, tourists and the tourism industry exploit the local culture, resources, attractions and the whole way of life of the local community. Croatia is in desperate need of a smaller scale of tourism which will not consume but instead preserve the environment and resources and improve the quality of life of the local population and which will not endanger local traditions and the demographic structure of the territory. The main point is that tourism alone is not enough and that the country's competitiveness should not be grounded only in tourism and traditional industries. The country's sustainable development should be based on new technologies, software production, creative industries with high added value, energetics and knowledge and a creative economy in general and Croatia should adapt to new trends and the new age as soon as possible.
A modern tourist product, which is adjusted to the needs of new tourists no longer includes a tourist partnership role, but individualisation and personalisation of the experience itself. Should such a base be accepted, it is to be concluded that traditional positioning of destination tourist offers on both macro and micro levels is no longer sufficient, i.e. positioning based on comparative advantages. By traditional positioning, it is not possible to differentiate the tourist offer from the competitors' tourist offer, which ultimately implies a request for competitive tourist offer positioning, enriched by new requirements and needs. Such an approach negates the conventional attitude that the existence and availability of comparative advantages is, in itself, sufficient in order to generate tourist demand and creation of competitive experience economy. Objective of this paper aims to offer a different approach to the competitive positioning of tourist destinations including positioning on the basis of the experience economy. The development of tourist products established on experience as the key exchange value requires an interdisciplinary approach, which, together with the applied marketing activities and competitive positioning through identity affirmation, leads to the tourist offer positioning from the point of view of the experience economy.
Tourism as a social phenomenon may be defined as a special form of indirect contact between two societies which may be comprehended according to the following scheme: communicator-messagereceiver. Therefore, the primary focus of tourism is the communication between tourists and the host destination. Tourism is a result of the interaction of people from emissive countries with the receptive countries. Establishment of contacts with people from different countries and cultures in contrast to the anonymity and alienation encountered in everyday life turns out to be a very important motivation for travelling. The scope of this article is to highlight the importance of the social interaction and effective intercultural communication in tourism encounters. Although tourism encounters may result in mutual appreciation, understanding, respect, tolerance and the overall improvement of the social interactions between individuals, it also represents a potential minefield full of difficulties, which occur mainly due to cultural differences in communication and rules of social behaviour.
In modern tourism, the concept of big and mass tourism has been abandoned, and the support has been given to responsible development based on the selected types of tourism. The existing mass and uniform types of tourism are being refined by new and higher quality contents; on the other hand, new types of tourism are also being developed which, thanks to their originality and diversity, enrich its content. In that context, culture has a direct impact on tourism and tourism increasingly affects culture, which has become an important motive for tourist travel. While some 30 years or so years ago cultural tourism implied heritage tourism, that is, visits to cultural and historical monuments, museums and galleries, some 10 years ago that phenomenon underwent its transformation, so that today the same term also implies different cultural and entertainment events and almost all manifestations of living and working cultures. Today, cultural tourism includes tourist travel during which tourists are active participants in the cultural life of the social community they visit, and popular culture represents the part of non-material cultural heritage which forms a new, although often neglected, way of the tourism product diversification. It is our aim to review the general trends in cultural tourism today as well as reveal the realities of the Croatian cultural-tourism product and establish the level of its development within contemporary Croatian tourism.
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