Caves of the Low Tatras National Park and Its Neighbourhood as Objects of Speleotourism

Abstract

Publicly accessible caves are important objects of the modern form of tourism, which is called speleotourism. The caves are important underground geolocalities, which are characterized by a high accumulation of visitors in a specific natural environment. They are usually part of large protected areas - national parks and protected landscape areas. The study deals with accessible caves in the Low Tatras National Park in the central part of Slovakia. In the national park, or rather in its vicinity, there are four caves formed in the carbonate rocks of the geological core of the Low Tatras mountains. In the first part of the study, we presented their basic geographical characteristics in terms of their description as underground geolocalities. The main aim of the study is to analyze the number of visitors to the Demänovská Cave of Freedom, Demänovská Ice Cave, located directly in the national park, Bystrianska Cave located in the buffer zone of the national park and Važecká Cave, located on the northern edge of the studied area. Individual geolocalities were evaluated in terms of 12 criteria (e.g., Variety and attractiveness of cave decoration, Interpretation of the guide, Difficulty of the tour, Amount of ticket price, and others), which were indexed answers of (speleo)tourists from the opinion poll. We conducted the survey during the summer months in the period from 2010 to 2019, and a total of 160 respondents participated. The basic results of a standardized public opinion survey gave us the answer to five research hypotheses. The results confirmed the important potential of caves as specific geolocalities for the development of (underground) speleotourism as a modern form of tourism. Speleotourism is currently an important form of tourism, which is developing in the national parks.