Spa tourism as a factor of demographic change of spa settlements in Serbia

Abstract

Spa tourism, as one of the leading forms of tourism in Serbia, is a significant factor in local and regional socio-economic phenomena and processes. This paper deals with the impact of spa tourism on local demographic changes. The analysis includes nine most important spas in Serbia, in accordance with the achieved tourist traffic. The influence of tourism in different spas, in the last four decades, on dynamic changes in their population is taken into account. The paper analyzes the extent to which the change in the population of spa settlements have taken place differently from changes at the wider municipal and republic level. Furthermore, in order to fully understand the importance of tourism for demographic processes, a change in participation of the employed local population in the tourism sector was also analyzed. The results show that tourism has a significant impact on the population of spa resorts. In forty years that were observed, regardless of general depopulation trend in Serbia, in most of the analyzed spas there was an increase in the number of inhabitants, and the highest growth rates were recorded in periods of the most intensive tourism development. The increase in the number of inhabitants of spa settlements was accompanied by the increase in the economic activity of the local residents in the tourism sector.

Key words: spas, tourism, settlements, population, Serbia