Creating a literary route through the city core: Tourism product testing

Abstract

Research on tourism routes is mainly focused on their development from the perspective of stakeholders, co-operation, and networking, but there are very few which explore them from the perspective of its users. In order to expand the tourist offer of Novi Sad (northern Serbia), one thematic route that promotes a part of the literary heritage was created. The aim of this study was to analyze the given literary route from a tourist perspective, checking out whether this route was created in a way that would satisfy its users. For this purpose, an experiment was conducted in which 50 students of tourism were divided into two simulated tours with a specialized tour guide. They were asked to use the ArcGIS application installed on their mobile phones to fill up a questionnaire about the literary route while moving through the selected checkpoints in the city center. The results provided answers to the questions like: whether the attractions of the given localities that the route links are properly selected, whether the thematic tour is good regarding the attraction order and whether it is in line with the growth of emotions of joy and positive surprise, which segments on the route should be improved in order to increase its quality, whether the route contributes to the tourist satisfaction that will create a desire for a route recommendation, and whether the route is appropriate to be offered to tourists, as well as to the locals. According to the preliminary results, the authors gave recommendations for the route improvement before its implementation on the tourist market.