European destination of excellence in Serbia: Challenges and chances within tourism development

Abstract

Since 2014, Serbia has been a part of the European Commission project called European Destinations of Excellence – EDEN. This project has envisaged increasing of the visibility and competitiveness of less developed destinations at the European level. Serbia was included in the mentioned project in order to encourage less developed tourist destinations rich with cultural and natural heritage to develop tourism. Municipalities of Knjaževac, Pirot and Novi Pazar have been included into the network of the European Destinations of Excellence. The aim of this paper is to identify opportunities for sustainable tourism development within destinations in Serbia included in the network of European Destinations of Excellence. The subject of research are challenges and changes in tourism development faced by the selected exceptional destinations of Europe in Serbia. The research carried out in this paper provides an answer to the question of the possibility of connecting and networking of the outstanding European Destinations of Excellence in Serbia, with an emphasis on choosing the most favorable destination management strategy in the further development of tourism. The research methodology in this paper is based on theoretical, normative and empirical sources. The scientific contribution of this paper focuses on determining the possibilities of improving the visibility of small tourist destinations - EDEN winners in Serbia.

Keywords

• Tourism Networking
• Integration
• Destination sustainability development