PRAKTIČNI ASPEKTI UČINAKA TURIZMA / PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF TOURISM EFFECTS

Abstract

Exploring the economic significance of tourism, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) argued that tourism represents the largest branch of the economy (it consumes around 11% of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the largest employer, the largest taxpayers and the like. Tourism also determines one of the largest travel migrations in the world, with the aim to preserve health, rest, entertainment and various sports and recreational activities. At the beginning of the third millennium, tourism has generated over a thousand million arrivals with a steady upward trend. Thus, tourism is a phenomenon that affects almost all spheres of human life and work and produces a variety of effects. Although many authors analyze in detail the effects of tourism, the main criticism is related to too little focus on the effects of certain types of tourism, as well as on the inability of researchers to identify and understand the process of producing effects. However, these effects can be mainly classified in to three main groups (economic effects, socio-cultural effects and environmental effects), which we will specifically discuss in this paper. However, it should be noted that there are positive and negative effects within each of the three groups, on which we will also focus on.