Ivana Žafran
Vuk Tvrtko Opačić
VISUAL PRESENTATION OF THE TOURISM ATTRACTION BASIS
OF LIKA REGION IN THE MEANS OF COMMUNICATION
DOI: 10.35666/28310438.2020.5.146
UDC: 911.3:338.48(497.9Lika)
Abstract: Visual presentation of tourism attractions in the means of communication creates a visitors’ image of an area before they decide to visit it. Tourist boards and other relevant stakeholders thus have the opportunity to determine more in detail how and in what form to present a tourism destination or individual tourism site, or to which clusters of attractions in the destination direct the attention of visitors. The most famous and most visited tourism site in the Lika region is the Plitvice Lakes National Park. Images of Plitvice Lakes are often used for the purpose of presenting the tourism supply on the regional, but also national level, while all other sites in Lika record noticeably lower tourist flow. The research is therefore based on the hypothesis that the clusters of natural tourism attractions that exist in the Plitvice Lakes National Park, such as geological and geomorphological characteristics of space, water, flora and landscape representations, play a leading role in tourism promotion of the entire Lika region. The individual attractions of Lika are classified into clusters in order to investigate their representation in tourism communication means. For this purpose, photographs in tourism brochures and on websites are analysed, as well as scenes in official promotional films of localtourist boards. A separate scoring system has been developed for each mean of communication, and the research results confirm that clusters of attractions related to natural heritage predominate in Lika's tourism promotion, but there are certain deviations at the local level depending on the chosen mean of visual communication. Comparing the number andrepresentation of clusters of attractions on the local tourist boards’ websites with tourist flow, it is found that cities and municipalities with more pronounced promotion of tourism sites and attractions on the websites achieve higher tourist flow and can be recognised as leaders of tourism development in the Lika region.
Key words: : tourism attraction, visual presentation, tourism, Plitvice Lakes National Park, Lika region, Croatia