Variations in seasonality in spa centres of Serbia

Sanja Pavlović, Nikola Todorović, Jelena Bolović, Marina Vesić

Abstract


Seasonality of tourist demand imposes a number of issues related to the destination’s carrying capacity and business activities of the individual service providers in tourism. As one indicator of seasonal fluctuation of tourist demand, the Gini index is identified in order to establish monthly concentration of tourists. In this study, the Gini index was calculated for four spa tourism destinations in Serbia (Vrnjačka Banja, Sokobanja, Niška Banja and Prolom Banja), in order to establish variability in the seasonality. The research took into consideration the period 2010–2019. Research results indicate that Niška Banja Spa has the lowest values of the Gini index, while Vrnjačka Banja Spa and Sokobanja Spa have the highest values, whereby no values are higher that .45 (mostly between .30 and .39). Given that the theoretically lowest value of the Gini index is 0 (smallest seasonal concentration) and the highest is 1 (biggest concentration), the selected spas still do not have particularly high degree of seasonal concentration of tourists. Possibilities for reduction of tourist demand seasonality are pointed out, given its impact on tourism planning and its economic effects.

Key words: tourist demand, seasonality, Gini index, spa, Serbia

© 2021 Serbian Geographical Society, Belgrade, Serbia.

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Serbia

 


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