Forest selfness as a new branch of tourism in Slovenia

Abstract

Apart from the forest management, National Forest Programme in the Republic of Slovenia (NFP) entails the environmental and social functions, but in practice the policy evaluation of these features has not been implemented, aside from the very rare exceptions. One such exception is the city of Celje, which partially meets the objectives set, owing to the fourteen kilometer well-maintained trails through the so-called City Forest, i.e. the urban forest in the context of the Learning Route in the tourist region of Celjska Koča. In this paper, we tackled an example of good practice, launched this year (2014) and conducted by the LTO Laufar Cerkno. The idea to do marketing of anti-stress therapies in the Slovenian forests is quite appropriate, since almost 60% of Slovenia is covered by forests. Based on the beneficial effects of certain forest types, there are at least three of them, suitable for implementing the so-called Forest Selfness Therapies owing to the great spread and representation of tree species since they, along with the therapeutic effects, promote strategic sustainable development, based on the development strategy of Slovenia tourism, as stated in Slovenian Tourism Development Strategy 2012- 2016. Given the fact that over the last decade, we have had highly positive trends, both in the growing number of tourists and overnights as well as in tourism receipts, it is logical to define a marketing concept for exploiting the social functions of the forest which are presented in this paper. The latter covers the definition of anti-stress therapies, service positioning in the market, exemplifying individual selfness products, segmentation of target customers as well as implementation of an effective marketing mix. Forest exploitation in Slovenia in terms of marketing the anti-stress therapies is definitely a niche market where Slovenia can significantly increase tourism receipts in the context of sustainable development.

Keywords

• stress management
• forest selfness
• trees
• tourism potential
• marketing