Management of continental saline ecosystems in the Republic of Serbia: Are these ecosystems suitable for nature-based tourism?

Abstract

Continental saline habitats represent unique, authentic and rare ecosystems. These ecosystems are typically distributed in arid and semi-arid regions; however, they are also found in inland areas in temperate climate zones. Usually, the general public is not familiar with this particular type of ecosystem. In order to present saline habitats to tourists, a broadly applied method of ecosystem suitability assessment (ESI-ecosystem suitability index) was used and adjusted to the purposes of this research. The research aims to estimate the nature-based tourism potentials of selected sites. Thus, six representative halophytic habitats distributed along the geographic gradient, from the Pannonian Plain to the south of Serbia, were chosen. In terms of each site, seven indicators (e.g., flora and vegetation, bird fauna, landscape, protection status, accessibility, and ecotourism facilities), important for nature-based tourism, were analyzed. The results show that the Pannonian saline habitats have greater opportunities for development of this type of tourism in almost all categories compared to southern sites.

The Future of the Republic of Serbia as an Adventure Tourism Destination

“…Broadly speaking, adventure tourism is any tourist activity related to nature, and its development basis is abundant natural resources and favorable geographical position of a destination (Gašović, 2017). It is very difficult to define adventure tourism, because its characteristics overlap with other specific forms of tourism, such as sport , rural (Leković et al, 2020), cultural (Sančanin et al, 2019) or ecotourism (Luković & Šilc, 2021). It is also closely related to nature-based tourism, but while nature-based tourism products focus on nature observation, adventure tourism products focus on concrete actions in nature (Dimitrovski et al, 2021a).…”

“…The Republic of Serbia is classified in the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia and ranks fifth within that region and 26th among developing countries in 2020. It is preceded by Croatia, which is the first in this region, and 11th in the overall ranking, followed by Georgia with the overall ranking of 18, then Montenegro (19) and Turkey (23). It is important to note that in 2008, none of these countries were among top five of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region.…”