Attributes of the tourism zones and how they correlate
The main goal of the study was to find consumer-based tourism zones in a large region
and compare them with the conventional administrative areas. Thus we also explore how
the main tourism attributes of these zones and regions are correlated and how they
compare.
Therefore, as seen above, variables representing the intensity of attractions in the area,
their specificity and their variety are relevant to assess the potential differential attractiveness
of the resulting zones. Variety is presented as the number of categories present in the
area (nature-based, active tourism, cultural, spas, ‘sun and beach’ and entertainment
attractions). In addition to these attraction-based attributes, we add three more general
attributes of the zones that affect their characterization, mostly in terms of managerial
challenges: number of beds, population and number of administrative borders within the
tourism zone. For instance, zones with lower numbers of beds might have to focus on the
management of growth strategies; the most populated tourism zones with important urban
centres might benefit from short-term, short-distance breaks by inhabitants of the zone;
and zones that cross both international and regional borders have major challenges in
terms of cooperation and integration of joint tourism development and marketing strategies.
A total of six variables were thus considered. The values of the correlation coeffi-
cient among these variables for both tourism zones and original destinations are
displayed in Tables 2 and 3.