Foreign Tour Operators and Travel Agents Knowledge of a Potential Tourism Destination: The Vojvodina Region of Serbia

Vojvodina is an autonomous region of Serbia, and has the potential to become a successful tourism destination. Twenty years of changes have elapsed since the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and destination planners in Vojvodina are now looking to accommodate visitors and generate service related jobs. The method for collecting data was through survey responses from those in the travel industry. The objective for conduct-ing this research is to analyze the knowledge and awareness of the devel-oping destination of Vojvodina. From here, it is possible to get a sense of the region’s awareness, and role tour operators and travel agents act as opinion makers in promoting destinations to their clientele. Results suggest that Vojvodina is not known as a tourism destination among foreign travel experts; furthermore, this would suggest that their clien-tele base is not informed of this region of Serbia as a tourism destina-tion. Although not known, this is better than having a negative image. With a non-image, tour operators and travel agents then have the abil-ity to creatively market and promote an image that will generate further awareness of the Vojvodina region as an emerging tourism destination. Key Words: destination awareness, destination image, destination knowledge, Vojvodina regio