AN ALTERNATIVE DESTINATION IN THERMAL TOURISM: GEOTOURISM (AFYONKARAHISAR SAMPLE)

Abstract

Thermal tourism, a kind of health tourism, is a type of tourism which meets water, sanitation, hygiene, housing and transportation needs of people through hot and cold spring water. Along with many thermal tourism centres in Turkey, Afyonkarahisar is an important thermal tourism centre as well. In addition to thermal resources, the province has natural and cultural values which are also important tourism sources. One of the prominent natural and cultural values is Frig Valley. Including visiting creations which arose as a result of geology-human relations and geologic and geomorphologic formations; the Frig Valley, has an important potential in terms of geo-tourism facilities. In this study, it was aimed to analyze geo-tourism potential of Afyonkarahisar province together with thermal tourism. Within this context, firstly, literature review; and later field study were carried out. In the light of these studies, the results indicated that the awareness about geo-tourism needs to be raised and geo-tourism needs to be planned together with thermal tourism as a whole.

Keywords

• Thermal Tourism
• Geotourism
• Frig Valley
• Afyonkarahisar