Local People’s Perception and Attitudes to the Development and Administration of Rural Tourism. Ödemiş/Birgi example

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Structural change in Turkiye’s tourism started about 1980s and it has been gradually developed. Tourism has some positive and negative effects on social, cultural, political and psychological factors. Thus the effects of tourism especially on local people can be significant and the perception of these effects may determine the developmental direction of the tourism. The aim of this article is to determine tourism perception of people living in Birgi which is a significant tourism center with her cultural and historical heritage and also to determine the prominent factors that create a tourism perception among local people. According to the results of the study the participants state that they are eager to take place in possible tourism investments planned for the district. The people are aware of the deficiencies in planning of tourism and people state their concerns on economy-environment relation for all the tourism investments planned in the district. Local people’s expectation for the planning of tourism focus on subjects such as increasing the number of tourism enterprises, transportation, publicity and marketing. Especially people’s demand on the establishment of new plants and the increasing of the public services is a kind of tourism perception that can be directly linked to economy. That the little more than the half of the participants have negative tourism perceptions on the issues such as environmental pollution and the destruction of historical places assert that people have also some concerns related to the negative sides of tourism.

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Rural tourism , local people , perception , attitude

eastern geographical review

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eastern geographical review