Case studyRural tourism in Roznava Okres: a Slovak case study
Introduction
Tourism is becoming increasingly important to the emerging market economies of Eastern and Central Europe. This paper presents the results from a three-year project in the Slovak Republic to aid the development of rural tourism in Roznava Okres, or North Gemer, in the east of the country. The paper provides
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an outline of tourism in Slovakia, its organisation and recent national government initiatives to accelerate its development,
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an investigation of the Roznava Okres rural tourism case study and its implications for the design and management of future rural tourism projects in Eastern and Central European countries.
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An overview of tourism in Slovakia
In little over a decade, Slovakia has experienced the demise of communism in the Velvet Revolution of 1989 and the benign partition of the former state of Czechoslovakia in January 1993. A landlocked country, Slovakia shares borders with Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine and Hungary, and has a population of 5,360,000, with 452,000 living in the capital city of Bratislava (OECD, 1996).
Since the division of Czechoslovakia into two independent states, it is the Czech Republic, driven by
The current organisation of tourism in Slovakia
The dominance of Vladimar Meciar in Slovakian politics was broken in September 1998 when his party, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, was beaten in the election by the coalition of opposition parties. The new Prime Minister, Mikulas Dzurinda, was joined by a new pro-Western president in May 1999. A largely ceremonial position, Rudolf Schuster was returned as President by popular vote. The previous Meciar/Kovac era had been marred by discord between the two incumbents and by a somewhat
The rural tourism case study: Roznava Okres
Gemer is an historic region of Eastern Slovakia, partially bounded by the Slovak–Hungarian border. The project focused on Roznava Okres, a single administrative area, essentially the North Gemer region. Covering land of approximately 1620 km2 and a rural population of 86,000, the only sizeable town is Roznava, boasting around 20,000 people (ADAS Consulting Ltd, 1996a). Fig. 1 outlines the project area, showing the primary tourism attractions and features. The economy of this rural region was
Implications of the case study for the development of rural tourism in Slovakia and Eastern Europe
The Roznava Okres rural tourism project has produced visible results, both direct and indirect, over the three years including
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an active local rural tourism association,
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a nationally recognised Tourist Information Centre for the area,
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the provision of technology to aid service provision,
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the emergence of Roznava town as a tourism service centre,
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the rejuvenation of rural crafts in the area, for example, sheep bell production,
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support for existing tourism businesses and the initiation of new
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the British Know How Fund for permission to use the reports and material generated by the Roznava Okres Rural Tourism Project. We would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments on the case study.
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