SPECIFIC ISSUES OF COASTAL DESTINATIONS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT - EMPIRICAL STUDY

Coastal tourism is usually vital to the economy of coastal destinations. Due to the increasing number of existing and emerging destinations, development of those destinations have to be controlled thought strategic planning and monitoring and based on the principles of sustainable development. That includes the set of indicators which offer great information base for tourism managers. Quality of the tourist experience is affected by a large set of factors; therefore the purpose of this paper is to better understand tourists' attitudes towards different offer elements. This research has been designed in a way that a survey questionnaire was distributed to tourists who stayed in a typical coastal tourism destination. The first objective was to analyze the tourists' expectations and satisfactions regarding different elements of tourism offer, second one was to indentify gaps between tourists' expectations and satisfactions and, consequently third aim was to identify the critical element of the analysed coastal destination. Analysis of obtained results has shown that critical elements of this particular destination are beaches, although they are at the same time perceived by the local management as the most important tourism resource for this destination. In this sense, this study provides an important backdrop for destination management looking to deal with their specific problem and therefore improve the level of tourists' satisfaction.