Neat Tourism- A Segment of Sustainable Development or Aggression of Development

Abstract

Over the last two decades, much attention has been devoted to the complexity of the tourist products mainly referring to environmentally responsible travel, visits to relatively undisturbed natural areas, supporting preservation of authentic material and spiritual cultural values, promoting education of visitors, while having a beneficial active impact on local population. During such journeys visitors discover beauty of nature, become exposed to richness of other cultures, learn about different ways of living and meet with locals - the processes which eventually help visitors to discover inner self as well. In search for such tourist products, new concepts and models have been developed in order to ensure the quality of experiencing nature, while protecting natural and cultural foundation for future business and generations of visitors to come. Taking this into consideration, the aim of this work is to stress the importance, limitations and future of NEAT tourism (nature-based, eco and adventure tourism). Although they differ in their respective meanings, all of these tourist forms share some common aspects since they are all somehow connected to natural destinations, they all emerged as a reaction to mass tourism and they might be a segment of sustainable development or a form of aggression on development. The future of NEAT tourism raises many issues. Hopefully, the tourism of 'tomorrow' will be more turned towards protecting existing values (environment and socio-cultural), than tourism types of today.