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Development of Tourism: Growth and Evolution of the Leisure Industry

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Three Decades of Polish Socio-Economic Transformations

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Abstract

The study presents changes in the development of tourism in a post-communist Central European country against the background of tourism trends. The aim of the research is to show the dynamics of the profound structural and spatial transformations that affected the tourism sector in Poland after 1989. It is carried out by identifying the factors behind these changes and defining the contemporary level of tourism services and traffic. Particular attention is paid to Polish tourist brand products which determine the country’s competitiveness on the global and European markets of tourist destinations. The study reveals that tourism development in Poland follows a sustainable path. Poland’s tourist attractiveness is gradually increasing. However, despite the growing tourist traffic and the gradual expansion of the accommodation base, Poland is still not an important tourist destination in Europe, and the economic importance of tourism is relatively small.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The opening of the Marriott Hotel in Warsaw in October 1989 and the return to the owner of the Pollera Hotel in Krakow in 1990 are recognised as the cut-off dates that mark the return of the market economy to the hotel industry in Poland.

  2. 2.

    Orbis SA, following its privatisation in 2000 and the commencement of cooperation with its French strategic partner, Accor, operates in Poland and Eastern Europe as a group investing in hotel facilities. It comprises 73 hotels, including 63 of its own hotels and 10 leased ones (over 14,000 rooms in total) in 6 countries in Central and Eastern Europe: the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Hungary. The hotels operate under brands owned by Accor, i.e.: Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure, Ibis, and their standards vary (from 5-star luxury hotels to 1-star economy ones).

  3. 3.

    According to data from the Polish Ministry of Economy, as a result of political and economic transformations, as well as bazaar tourism, which developed thanks to price and supply structure differences, as well as exchange rates in 1996, Poland was ranked eighth on the list of countries most frequently visited by tourists, published by the World Tourism Organisation, and 14th on the list of countries which generated the highest income from arrivals of tourists. This position was higher than that of countries such as Greece or Turkey (Kropiwnicki 2003).

  4. 4.

    The Europa Fair is a bazaar in Europe that operated between 1989 and 2008 on the site of a former stadium and became a multicultural space where, apart from Poles, Nigerians, Russians, Turks, and Vietnamese traded. In 2012, the National Stadium was built there.

  5. 5.

    Warsaw (1.8 m in 2019), Kraków (779.1 thousand), Łódź (679.9 thousand), Wrocław (642.9 thousand), Poznań (534.8 thousand), Gdańsk (470.9 thousand) (Demographic Yearbook 2020).

  6. 6.

    In the last 20 years, Kraków has become one of the most attractive tourist destinations in Europe. The cultural heritage, extensive accommodation facilities, good transport accessibility (including, low-cost airlines) mean that Kraków is visited by about 14 million tourists every year. In 2019, 3.3 million overnight stays were by foreign tourists. Most come from Germany (14.2%), Great Britain (13.9%), Italy (11.5%), France (11.2%), Spain (10.4%), and Ukraine (5.4%).

  7. 7.

    The index is composed of four subindexes (Subindex A: Enabling Environment, Subindex B: Travel and Tourism Policy and Enabling Conditions, Subindex C: Infrastructure, Subindex D: Natural and Cultural Resources) and includes 90 specific evaluation indicators: Scores range from 1 to 7, where 1 = worst and 7 = best (Calderwood and Soshkin 2019).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Human Geography and Planning, Adam Mickiewicz University, B. Krygowskiego 10, 61-608, Poznań, Poland

    Ewa Kacprzak, Urszula Kaczmarek & Barbara Maćkiewicz

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  1. Ewa Kacprzak
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  2. Urszula Kaczmarek
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Correspondence to Urszula Kaczmarek .

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  1. Faculty of Human Geography and Planning, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poznań, Poland

    Paweł Churski

  2. Faculty of Human Geography and Planning, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poznań, Poland

    Tomasz Kaczmarek

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Kacprzak, E., Kaczmarek, U., Maćkiewicz, B. (2022). Development of Tourism: Growth and Evolution of the Leisure Industry. In: Churski, P., Kaczmarek, T. (eds) Three Decades of Polish Socio-Economic Transformations. Economic Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06108-0_14

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