Towards a new local tourism economy: Understanding sense of community, social impacts and potential enterprise opportunities in Podgrađe Bač, Vojvodina, Serbia

Serbia’s Vojvodina Region has been discussed in recent research as a region with much tourism potential. Numerous studies have assessed different tourism opportunities in Vojvodina, but there is a need to understand how local residents perceive tourism to address how they see their destination developing. This paper focuses on the rural community of Podgrađe Bač. The reason for focusing on this micro-community is directly adjacent is the Bač Fortress, which is currently under review with UNESCO to be recognised (and protected) as a World Heritage Site. There is a need to consider how social impacts and social change are about altering peoples’ outlook and attitude, as well as gaining support to encourage cohesive involvement among members of the community. Data were collected for this study through a Likert Scale survey with associated open-ended questions. Given the micro-locale case study focus, 29 surveys were collected from one participant in each household. The results and analysis are based on understanding sense of community in Podgrađe Bač, assessing the attractiveness of Bač Fortress and subsequent local tourism developments, and assessing resident perceptions of tourism, by considering social impacts, enterprise opportunities and overall potential

Negotiating stigmatisation of deviant behaviour: an exploration of locals’ perceptions of nude tourists

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The Curse of Tourism?

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of tourism on economic growth. Our analysis covers 133 countries over the period 1995 to 2007, including 32 countries highly dependent on tourism during that period. The results show that specialization in tourism per se had no significant effects on economic growth. However, countries that are both highly dependent on trade and on tourism tend to report significantly lower growth. These findings are consistent with tourism having an effect analogous to the Dutch disease

Extending the exit brand: from Serbia’s fortress to Montenegro’s coast

Throughout the 1990s, the Western Balkans was a region of geopolitical dispute as the former Republic of Yugoslavia was violently fragmented by a turbulent war. Focusing on Serbia, the war negatively affected the country’s national image and deterred international visitors, causing the country to rapidly stagnate. In Novi Sad, images of destroyed infrastructure, bombings and international interventions were conveyed to global audiences through the media. Conflict left Novi Sad city and much of Serbia in a state of despair, thus deterring visitors. International audiences consumed negative images of Serbia as a country with much violence and political corruption, thereby projecting fearful imaginations and left the country isolated. In 2000 a youth-led movement began in Novi Sad as a response to the atrocities in Serbia throughout the 1990s. The Exit Movement, which led to the Exit Festival, was organised by students from the University of Novi Sad. During this time, youths gathered to protest against the policies of then Serbian president, Slobodan Milošević (see Rogel 2004). The Exit Festival has become synonymous with Novi Sad, Serbia, and has gained further international recognition being awarded ‘Best Major European Festival’ in 2013. The Exit brand was extended with the commencement of the Sea Dance Festival in 2014 (and soon after was awarded ‘Best Mid-Sized European Festival’ in 2015). The Sea Dance Festival became an instant success, despite the foundations of the Exit Movement being one based on narratives of struggle, protest and democracy. It is the successful relationship between these two festivals, held in neighbouring countries, and the possible lost opportunities for Serbian tourism as a result, that form the focus of this chapter

Destination Competitiveness: Public and Private Sector Tourism Management in Serbia

© 2017, © The Author(s) 2017. This study explores the underlying dimensions of destination competitiveness, analyzing the contributions of government and industry stakeholders in enhancing the competitive position of Serbia on the international tourism market. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis were used to explore latent dimensionality of “destination competitiveness” among 48 competitiveness attributes evaluated by experts from the public and private sectors of Serbia’s tourism industry. Results show that Serbian competitiveness structure comprises five dimensions: risk management and adaptive environmental strategies, innovation and product development, planning for sustainable development, networking and community concern, and education for sustainability. The research identifies challenges and suggests areas where private and public linkages should be strengthened in order to enhance the competitiveness of Serbia’s tourism industry. Generically, the study advances our understanding of destination competitiveness, its multidimensional nature, and the implications for policy making

Modified Importance–Performance Analysis for Evaluating Tourism Businesses Strategies: Comparison of Slovenia and Serbia

A modified nine-quadrant importance–performance analysis is employed to assess the importance which Slovenian and Serbian tourism industry stakeholders attach to 48 nominated strategic activities to promote business and destination competitiveness. An important finding is that respondents in each country allocated the bulk of activities to the ‘keep up the good work’ strategy. In both destinations, this strategy was dominated by activities related to product development and innovation. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the identified priority activities require close examination to determine their ‘enabling conditions’ and the implications of an action based on them

Achieving destination competitiveness: an importance–performance analysis of Serbia

As a relatively new and under-researched tourism destination, Serbia provides an interesting context to assess destination competitiveness in conditions of global environmental changes and the additional challenges of transition from a socialist economy to a market-based economy. This article uses importance–performance analysis (IPA) to assess the importance of different activities to underpin tourism development in Serbia, as well as the industry's perceived performance in respect of these activities. There are a number of areas in which Serbian tourism industry considers itself to be underperforming in the implementation of activities to maintain destination competitiveness. This article analyses these results in detail using IPA as a diagnostic tool. Particular attention is paid to investigating the implications of the findings for both destination managers and private tourism operators in Serbia that can assist them to develop a focused action agenda to achieve and maintain destination competitive advantage. The approach can be used in other destinations to assess tourism ability to meet the challenges of global trends

Domains and Solutions of the Braess Paradox

The Braess paradox in road planning presents a case, where adding a new connection in a road network may lead to delayed arrival because of violation of the balance in the traffic flow. The paper discusses a generalization of this paradox. The initial, the asymmetrical, and the Pareto optimal domain are identified. Administrative solution with the participation of a controller is introduced, which aims to minimize the time of arrival, and thus has an environmental aspect. The preferences of the groups of passengers in the vehicles are modeled by an analytical arctan-approximated utility. Nash arbitration is employed to find an optimal solution that maximizes the Nash utility criterion. It is performed over the optimal Pareto domain that is outlined in four stages. A numerical example with 40 vehicles and five types of preferences of the passengers demonstrates the ideas