The Regional tourism planning model and the case of Nevşehir

Tourism is one of the biggest and fastest growing industries in the world trade and this trend is expected to continue in the future. International torism offers many economics, social and environmental benefits as well as cost for many destination countries in the 21st century. In order to capitalize on the economic, social and environmental benefits of tourism development and minimize potential threats and problems, destination countries need to manage the tourism industry. In other words there is a strong need for countries to plan, implement and control the development of the tourism industry. The study is an attempt to develop a regional tourism planning model and apply it in the context of Nevşehir Tourism Region in Central Anatolia, Turkey. A regional planning approach is preferred, because tourism planning at national level does not seem to be a sensible approach in a large country like Turkey, different regions differ from each other in terms of tourism supply, socio-economic features and domestic and international tourism demand profile. This necessitates the devision of Turkey into homogenous regions and make appropriate plans at the regional level. To develop a regional tourism planning model and apply it to the Nevşehir Tourism region, both theoretical discussions and empirical field research are used. Theoretical part of the dissertation concentrates on previous research concerning tourism planning concepts and regional tourism planning model is presented theoretically. Empirical field research of the study is an application of the development model to the Nevşehir Tourism Region. The empirical part points out many information gaps and problems in the planning of tourism in Nevşehir.