Turizmde Ürün Çeşitliliği Yoluyla Ürün Değeri Oluşturma: Türkiye'deki Arz Kaynaklari Üzerine Bir İnceleme

Abstract

Creating tourism product value through product differentiation is the key to success in today's fierce competitive environment between des­tinations. It is unescapable for destination managements to enrich core tourism products with alternative ones as today's tourists demand more value for products they purchase. Hence, the purpose of this research is to investigate tourism supply resources of Turkey and to evalu­ate how these resources can be used to create tourism product value for the Turkish tourism. To achieve this purpose, a two stage research process was followed. At the first stage, a content analysis of visual and printed tourism material was performed. At the second stage, government tourism officials of 76 Turkish cities were surveyed via mail to determine their perceptions about tourism supply resources of Turkish cities. Research results showed that heavy emphasis was given on historical and environmental resources while little emphasis was given on urban and cultural tourism resources in the tourism promotion material of Turkish cities. Similarly, research results indicated that adequate emphasis was not given on thermal tourism resources while the majority of destinations have various thermal sources. The results further suggested that presentation of local and cultural tourism values should be emphasized more strongly in the promotion mate­rial. A series of recommendations are given based on the study results toward developing high value tourism products in Turkey.