Residents` Perceptions of Socio-Cultural Impacts of Tourism in Vrnjačka Banja, Serbia

Abstract

In order to reach the sustainable development of a tourism destination, it is important to investigate how residents perceive the impacts of tourism development. Tourism may cause improvements in residents' quality of life in many aspects of it. On the other side, with a greater number of tourists of different cultures in a destination, unpleasant crowds can occur, which may lead to community disruption, loss of cultural identity of the local community, and to other negative socio-cultural impacts of tourism. The danger of negative impacts of tourism might be even greater when the destination is small, considering the total number of residents and the size of the territory. This paper analyses the residents` perceptions of the socio-cultural impacts of tourism in Vrnjačka Banja, the leading spa destination in Serbia. The survey method was used to collect primary data and it included 110 respondents. Data were processed by Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Results indicate that residents have more negative perceptions of the socio-cultural impacts of tourism in Vrnjačka Banja than positive