Tourism development of rural areas – customer perspective

In the last couple of years under the effects of economic crises, all tourist destinations have experienced some kinds of changes. These changes have sometimes influenced tourist behaviour. Rural tourism has become a very important and fast growing industry. Hence, there is increased competition for tourists among international destinations. In such conditions, in order to be successful, destination marketing should be guided by a thorough analysis of tourist motivation, their satisfaction and loyalty. Therefore, the following hypothesis has been formed: Rural destinations with similar characteristics, but in different developmental stages, are achieving different levels of tourist satisfaction which is reflected in the realized tourist consumption. This research has been designed in a way that a survey questionnaire was distributed to tourists who visited two different types of Croatian rural destinations ; one is Istria where rural tourism is in a developmental phase, and the other is continental Croatia, where the development of rural tourism has just begun to develop. Therefore, a comparison regarding tourist characteristics has been made between tourists visiting the mentioned rural destinations. The first goal of this research was to determine the features that characterize Croatian rural tourists, and their satisfaction with tourism attributes of those destinations. The next goal was to identify the tourist satisfaction gaps between these different destinations. The results verified our hypothesis that, though those groups are both visiting rural destinations and both can be considered as rural tourists, there are differences between them. Differences have been noted regarding age distribution, motives, consumption, and the level of satisfaction with different destination attributes. This research brings valuable information to the tourism sector concerning tourist preferences through its use of importance-satisfaction analysis. Furthermore, destination managers could use these results to establish a higher tourist-satisfaction level in order to improve and sustain destination competitiveness with the ultimate aim of improving the economic effects of tourism development in rural areas, as well as strengthening the direct and indirect positive economic impact of tourism.