The Effect of Cultural and Natural Heritage on Tourism Attractiveness in Slovakia

The Effect of Cultural and Natural Heritage on Tourism Attractiveness in Slovakia Abstract This thesis questions a traditional understanding of cultural and natural heritage as two of the main determinants of tourism attractiveness. The motivation to write it was that in Slovakia, there are multiple locations with plentiful natural and cultural monuments, but since some of them are popu- lar tourist destinations, the others are relatively unknown from the tourism perspective. Based on the review of the existing academic literature, the au- thor understands the concept of attractiveness as a phenomenon composed of the attributes of a certain attraction or location and tourists' perception of the destinations. Therefore, the models connect both aspects of the tourism system - supply and demand for tourism. The dependent variable repre- senting demand is the number of visitors in accommodation establishments per district in 2018 or this value per capita. The main independent vari- ables are the number of national cultural monuments and national natural monuments and reserves, the variables typical for a tourism product. De- spite the estimates of their effects seem to be clearly positive and significant, especially for nature, before including additional explanatory variables and their logarithmic..