STAKEHOLDERS' UNDERSTANDING OF FACTORS INFLUENCING TOURISM DEMAND CONDITIONS: THE CASE OF SLOVENIA

The present paper aims to assess the importance of different factors influencing demand conditions for a tourist destination on the basis of individual stakeholder perceptions. The relationship between the tourist demand conditions and individual influential factors, such as inherited resources, created resources, supporting factors and resources, destination management and situational conditions is examined using regression analysis. Existing studies on tourism destination and tourism demand were reviewed and their limitations were identified. The study is limited to Slovenian as a tourist destination, but can be generalised to other regions. The study offers important contributions for research (an appropriate conceptual and measurement model of competitiveness indicators) and for practice (important information for tourism stakeholders is the obtained result about the significance of appropriate and qualified tourism managers). Mailed structured questionnaire data for this study were collected from tourism stakeholders on the supply side. The respondents were selected from tourism industry stakeholders, government officials, tourism school academics and postgraduate students on tourism courses. Out of 291 questionnaires sent, 118 or 41 % were returned. The principal components method was applied in the first phase. A new synthetic variable - a principal component for each of the six groups of variables was calculated. Before conducting a principal component analysis correlations among the variables in each of the six groups were calculated and we proceeded with Bartlett's test of sphericity, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy. At the end, the linear regression model was applied. The first independent variable, NACURES, has a weak, positive and not statistically significant influence on DEMCON. The second independent variable, CRERES, has a positive influence on demand conditions, DEMCON, but is not of convincing statistical significance. The third independent variable, SUPFAC, negatively influences the dependent variable, but this influence is weak and not statistically significant, The fourth independent variable, MGT, has a strong and statistically significant impact. The fifth independent variable, SITCON, has a statistically significant and negative influence on the DEMCON. This study examined factors determining tourism demand for Slovenia as a tourist destination. It gives valuable information, which hopefully will help tourism stakeholders, especially tourism managers to respect more the meaning of different factors influencing tourism demand.