Spatial analysis of public attitudes towards domestic leisure tourism in Bulgaria

Abstract

Tourism is a very important sector for the Bulgarian economy with its GDP share varying between 10 and 13% before the COVID-19 health crisis. In 2021 domestic tourism accounted for 89% of the personal travel expenditures of Bulgarians. The purpose of the present paper is to analyse public attitudes towards the domestic leisure tourism in Bulgaria and its spatial distribution at the NUTS-2 regions and the residence place type level. The data used in the research are from a national representative survey based on a two-staged random sample stratified by the Bulgarian districts and the residence place type (capital, district administrative centre, town and village). The methodology includes: literature review, descriptive analysis, spatial analysis, average values, building one- and two- dimensional frequency distributions, statistical hypothesis testing, etc. The indicators used in the paper are: practices for domestic leisure tourism, stay duration in domestic resorts, frequency of domestic leisure tourism, people not practicing domestic leisure tourism, domestic leisure tourism average satisfaction level. The obtained results show the differences between those indicators in NUTS-2 and residence place type level, as well as between summer and winter leisure tourism. The presented results are of particular importance, since some of these differences are significantly large.