The expectations of the local community and visitors from tourism in rural areas: Case of Safranbolu-Yörükköyö village

Abstract

The formation and development of tourism in a specific rural area is bound to the natural and cultural landscape assets, which alters that area from others. In fact, many components such as the local culture, agricultural pattern and natural resources are the features that form rural areas. For this reason determining the expectations and inclinations of the local community who are the center of the target group and those participators that are to use these resources is an important subject. In this study, the topics were questioned with a research based on questionnaires, observations and related literature are (1) What is the visitors' land use and satisfaction level? (2) What are the expectations of the local community from tourism and what are they able to do? With this aim, different questionnaires were applied to the visitors and the local community in the case of the Safranbolu-Yörükköyü Village. These questionnaires were applied to a total of randomly selected 194 people. One hundred and forty four of them were composed of visitors and 50 of them were from the local community. Questionnaires have been applied to people having different socio-economic structures in June and July of 2004. The research shows that Safranbolu-Yörükköyü has a suitable potential for rural tourism with its historical, cultural and natural resources. These resources can contribute to the diversification and distribution of tourism to different seasons and the local people can have active roles during this process. © 2007 Asian Network for Scientific Information.