MEASURING TOURISM IMPACTS IN CITY SPACE

During the last years the number of tourist in cities has been increasing in conjunction with the development in transport and information technologies. As the number of tourists grows, so does the volume of tourist and related infrastructure, which leads to creation of urban tourism areas. The development of these urban tourism areas could force resident facilities to be replaced by tourist ones with a consequence of marginalization of urban residents and their needs. An uncontrolled development of urban tourism could lead to emergence of dual society, alienation of tourist areas from the rest of urban space, creation of tourist ghettos and an overall devaluation of tourism in the city. The aim of this paper is to introduce and discuss the ways of measuring the urban tourism impacts on local inhabitants and surrounding city space and thus the quality of tourism generally.