Tourist regions and political regions. Politics of regionalization

Abstract

Tourist regions are subjects of scientific studies, useful in the description of tourist space and tools of effective destination management as well. Artificial by nature they are intentionally created on the basis of arbitrary criterions. Authors take into consideration the chosen regionalization proceedings and tourist regions not in a context of their tourist attractiveness but theoretical foundations of their distinction. Chosen criteria result practically in specific technical proceedings of space delimitation into tourist regions but also support reaching different cognitive, educational, economical, market, social, cultural and − at last − political or ideological goals. Even rough review of tourist regions shows that most of them have the character of political regions: states, group of states or administrative units. There are many reasons of described situation, including the fact that a political region is always an addressee of politics conducted by “somebody” and “for something”, to achieve aims. The political-tourist region is organized and fitted with different institutions established to realize, monitor and evaluate political aims and to collect statistical data. Statistics and economy are the main reasons of using political regions in tourism. Tourist regions are also established on the basis of other criteria – they might become (intentionally or as a natural consequence) a source of spatial, social or even cultural identification. It creates a new regional identity especially in places where other socially useful waypoints don’t exist. A tourist region is constructed but it can also “create”, integrating or antagonizing. In the paper authors point out that a naming of regions is the equally important and also often political phenomenon as their distinction from the space. All described phenomena are illustrated on the basis of the selected, purposefully given examples (the case studies) which, in the authors’ opinion, explain mentioned issues in the best way.