Developing Method for Evaluating Attractiveness, Accessibility and Safety of Visiting Historical Recreational and Tourist Sites

Abstrakt

The main purpose of the article is to present a method for assessing the attractiveness, accessibility and safety of historical recreational and tourist places, including facilities related to military tourism and dark tourism. The paper seeks to introduce the issues of the above-mentioned forms of tourism and – based on a survey – identify factors that make recreational and tourist space accessible and safe. The authors present and analyze the indicators and measures of the assessment, as well as demonstrate the procedure of evaluation. On the basis of surveys conducted on a group of one hundred experts in the field of tourism and recreation, the ten most important elements of space were selected. Subsequently, using weight values, we proceeded to indicate the strength of impact imposed by individual elements of space on the attractiveness and accessibility of facilities and the safety of visitors. Furthermore, determining the weight values allowed for the use of the weighted sum method during the assessment. Surveys were conducted from June to September 2017. The method was verified against one of the historical recreational places located in Poland – the Wolf ’s Lair in Gierłoż. The developed method allowed us to assess the attractiveness, accessibility and safety of historical recreational and tourist facilities. The results of evaluation of the Wolf ’s Lair in Gierłoż proved instrumental in identifying elements that have a positive impact on the level of tourism development, and those that are either missing or may be inadequate.