The economic contradictions and negative aspects of contemporary tourism

Abstract

In the article the author, after similar research in the social, cultural and spado-economic spheres, deals with the contradictions and the negative aspects in the economic sphere of contemporary tourism. This research, alongside the investigation of the problem of alienation and delineation in tourism, "the mass” character and the "selectivity" of Croatian tourism and the systematization of positive and negative phenomena and functions in tourism represent the core of die research project which die author is working upon for the needs of die Ministry of Science and Technology of the Republic of Croatia under the title the Social and Economic Contradictions of Croatian Tourism. In researching the negative and unfavorable economic or business phenomena and consequences the author sets out with the thesis that tourism is primarily significant because of its positive and favorable economic functions and characteristics but that as a product, reflection and reflex of society and individual economic systems it acquires various positive but also negative features. The article systematizes all the unfavorable and negative phenomena of tourism, discusses the influence of tourism on the relative and absolute decrease of economic achievement and on the broadening of structural disproportions between tourist demand and supply. In similar manner the second "bloc" of the research project entitled "The unfavorable economic consequences of the seasonal character of tourism and measures for lessening die seasonal cycle" die author diagnoses the problems but also gives answers with the aim of decreasing the negative aspects of contemporary tourism in the world and in Croatia, all with the purpose of promoting a higher quality in tourism but also in the entire socio-economic system.