ANALYSIS OF THE SOUTHEASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES' CULTURAL AND CREATIVE TOURISM COMPETITIVENESS

The main goal of this paper is to explore the competitiveness of the cultural and creative tourism of the Southeastern European countries. The purpose of this paper is to point out the possibilities for improvement of total tourist competitiveness of the Southeastern European countries through cultural and creative tourism. The analysis is based on the report of the World Economic Forum for 2017 "Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2017": Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index. The secondary data collected have been processed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results point out major differences in the average index of cultural resources and business travel of the Southeastern European countries and also on insufficient competition of cultural and creative tourism of the Southeastern European countries in the global environment. The main discovery of this paper indicates significant possibilities for improvement of the competitive position of the Southeastern European countries which is counted by a number of tourist arrivals through the increasing index of cultural recourse and business travel for 0.5 index points.