Evaluation of holy places in terms of tourist attraction in the context of cultural tourism: An application in Balıklı Göl scale

People travel more consciously for cultural aims with the desire of learning, seeing, self-improvement and having information about something rather than wandering aimlessly. There are two prerequisites for the sacred places within these aims to be able to take place in tourism as an attractive element: Firstly, to be able to meet the consumption need, that is to convert it into tourist product; secondly, to be offered to the consumption of consumers in the tourism sector, that is tourism marketing is done. In this study, it is aimed to determine how the holy places of Balıklı Göl and its surroundings are perceived as tourist attractions and attractiveness potential of these places. Questionnaire tecnique is used in the study and for it, 450 questionnaires are printed in totally. Questionnaires with missing data are not included in the evaluation, and a total of 387 questionnaires are analyzed. Reliability analysis is first applied to scales and descriptive statistics of scales are prepared. Then, a demographic chart is created by calculating the percentage and frequency values of the demographic variables. In addition, for each scale, participants' tendencies regarding scales are determined and frequency tables are prepared. Independent Sample T-Test, One Way ANOVA analyzes are performed to test the hypotheses generated in the analysis of the data. According to the results of the analysis, more than half (56.8%) of the visitors who participated in the study think that Balıklı Göl and the sacred places around it are a tourist attraction. Visitors have stated that this site is a place where they can pray, feel relaxed and close to Allah, strengthen their spiritual feelings and its architectural structure is interesting.