Cultural events as a tourism product of Vojvodina

Abstract

A special place among tourist attractions belongs to those from the field of culture and cultural heritage. In last decades cultural tourism faced a rapid growth on global market and therefore became a subject of numerous studies. Culture in Vojvodina has a long and rich tradition. Centuries of cohabitation inducted mutual cultural influences of many nations and resulted in a rich cultural diversity of expressions and their fruitful interaction. Today, there is a vast number of local traditional events and festivals in Vojvodina. Some of them exceeded the local market and expanded through the region and beyond. Events in Vojvodina have significant tourism potential, although a majority has a local character with insignificant or no tourist importance. Most of these events are unsustainable as well as spatially and temporally unsynchronized. Using the results of previous mapping, data collection and focus group research, the aim of this paper is to classify all existing cultural events in Vojvodina and propose the guidelines for their improvement in order to strengthen the cultural identity and cultural tourism product. The proposed steps and guidelines outlined in this paper should lead to improvement of cultural tourism, through strengthening tourism potentials of cultural events in Vojvodina.

Keywords

• Cultural events
• Cultural tourism
• Cultural identity
• Tourism product
• Vojvodina