Tourism space versus tourism destination: methodological considerations and empirical testing of their development

Abstract

The traditional understanding of geographical space as a given place seems to be insufficient nowadays. It should be analyzed in a wider context of social, cultural, economic and environmental aspects and even psychological and emotional factors should be considered. It means that tourism space/destination, which has mostly been treated as a geographical domain, should also be studied as a set of similar factors. In this respect, any tourism space/destination is characterized by complexity and multi-dimensionality, which generate an ontological question concerning its nature. Taking these considerations into account, a research problem related to the essence of tourism space/destination as well as the possibility of its development has been formulated. The problem is followed by the hypothesis that the development of tourism space/destination is measured by the achievement of the state of tourism sustainability. In the empirical part, a method to assess the development of tourism space/destination has been proposed.