Slow and tourism – it is the alternative for small town development!?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15170/MM.2023.57.KSZ.02.06Keywords:
slow tourism, small town, tourism development, local identity, local tourism resourcesAbstract
THE AIM OF THE PAPER
The development opportunities, competitiveness, and residential attractiveness of small towns are becoming stronger, and as a result, they are given a special role in the settlement system. The promising and successful formation of this role can be helped by the philosophy and practice of slow-based city development (Osbaldiston 2013, Birkner és tsai 2017). The slow philosophy mainly emphasizes the importance of traditions, quality, environmentally friendly agricultural production, and local products. Their basic principles also include a healthy lifestyle and the activity of local communities, especially in making decisions concerning them. Our aim is to present and apply the slow philosophy and the integrated slow tourism in the future construction of settlements.
METHODOLOGY
As part of the small town marketing research program, we conducted primary research in the fall of 2020 among small Hungarian towns with 5,000 and 20,000 inhabitants. We asked the leaders of small towns how they define and experience life in a small town, how they judge their abilities and their role in the settlement system, and what problems they struggle with. The topicality and importance of the topic is shown by the high response rate.
MOST IMPORTANT RESULTS
According to our primary survey results among small towns, tourism appears prominently in settlement development plans. Slow tourism in small towns can create real values (Desalvo - Calzatti 2017), On the one hand, it is a healing alternative for metropolitan destinations with a variety of motivations, satisfying many target groups, with significant tourist traffic, and previously struggling with over-tourism. On the other hand, it represents a sustainable, tourism-building perspective for areas that have been left out of tourist traffic until now (Pécsek 2008).
RECOMMENDATIONS
Many examples show that slow philosophy is a settlement development alternative based on local identity and satisfaction, which mobilizes local resources in a sustainable manner. In our study, we present three initiatives where the slow philosophy was successfully applied in settlement development.
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