Customer Involvement in Sustainable Tourism Planning at Lake Balaton, Hungary—Analysis of the Consumer Preferences of the Active Cycling Tourists

Abstract

This study uses an innovative tourism product development approach, based on co-creation or customer involvement, related to Lake Balaton, a mass tourism-based destination in Hungary, from the point of view of the market segment of active cycling tourists. The investigation of opportunities for the development of cycling tourism first of all relies on the new approach of attraction and product development around the destination, in which it is important to take into consideration the consumer preferences of the most important related group of tourists—active cycling tourists. The sustainable approach of tourism product development also provides an opportunity to decrease the spatial and temporal concentration of tourism, which is largely concentrated on the summertime season. The aim of this study is to explore aspects of the customers’ demand for tourism development in terms of cycling tourism with the help of primary data collection, in order to provide adequate directions for sustainable tourism development in the destination. Revealing the demand side of active cycling tourism related to Lake Balaton, the authors used both qualitative (focus group discussions and structured interviews) and quantitative questionnaire survey (computer-assisted data collection) research methods. The latter online surveys were carried out in November and December, 2019, and resulted with an appraisable sample of 809 questionnaires. As for the method, descriptive statistics and relationship analyses were applied. More than five thousand (5050) possible relationships were examined between the closed answers of the questionnaire by Kendall’s rank correlation coefficient (τ) and Cramer’s V, depending on whether they could be measured on a nominal or ordinal scale. The results show that the content analysis of the primary research provides well determined directions for the sustainable tourism development of cycling tourism at Lake Balaton, so customer involvement seems to be a win-win situation both for the customers (tourists) and the decision makers.

The Attractive Power of Rural Destinations and a Synergistic Community Cooperative Approach: A “Tourismability” Case

“…In this sense, the voluntary nature and activism [171] in implementing a deconstruction of territory boundaries [9] through creativity [21] is a crucial source of competition to estimate the balance of benefits of tourism and ruralness and a non-capitalist view [172]. In addition, raising the awareness of residents involved [173] and promoting the cooperative approach in projecting and executing the event reflects a positive image, empowering values that link social relationships in the village system, attracting tourists who are specifically motivated to live pure experiences with sustainable goals [6]. According to these objectives, events like the one analyzed can contribute to tourists' specific destination choices and intention to revisit [174], because of the aim to concretely revive the fundamental characteristics of the traditional village, where the durability of the residents is interdependent with the land [175].…”

Standardization of Services as Key Components of Cycling Tourism Destination Development

“…Cycling tourism development is found to be economically (e.g., Buning and McNamee 2016;Kaya and Erdoğan 2020;Preez and Lee 2016), socially, and environmentally beneficial in natural, often remote areas in the long run (Gazzola et al 2018). It also has the potential to help local economies recover from natural disasters (Di Giacobe, Di Ludovico and D'Ovidio Corrected Proof) and the effects of mass tourism, capacity constraints, and/or high seasonality (Lőrincz, Banász and Csapó 2020). A coherent development of cycling tourism therefore requires clear guidelines and monitoring (Institute for Transport Studies, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences 2019).…”

Balaton Lake (virtual) projected and perceived destination image amid Covid-19 pandemic

“…At Balaton, the number of guest nights is over six million annually – but the majority of these are accounted for by domestic tourists ( Aubert and Berki, 2007 ) – according HSCO (Hungarian Central Statistical Office) 2019 statistics, 77% of guests were domestic tourists ( Lőrincz et al, 2020 ). Balaton has very strong seasonality – the vast majority of tourists visit in the three summer months only – and the territorial distribution is overwhelmingly centred on its shores.…”

“…However, there is currently an initiative to extend the destination, both in time and space. In 2019 Lake Balaton accommodated 1,999,545 guests in commercial accommodation, of which 462,576 were foreign guests ( Lőrincz et al, 2020 ). Whereas Hungarian tourists are well aware of Balaton’s breath-taking, natural scenery and valuable cultural heritage, these attributes have not been widely promoted in Hungary’s neighbouring countries.…”