Perception and attitudes of local people on sustainable cultural tourism on the Islands: The case of Nicosia

Abstract

Today, for the sake of gaining tourism revenues, culture, nature and historical values are being ignored especially in island countries. As a result, tourism activities in the country decelerate and even vanish in time. According to the current tourism understanding, tourists are curious about the historical and cultural structure, which reflects the spirit of the region, and plan their travels accordingly. In this sense, it is essential that sustainable cultural tourism policies are determined by people-government-civil society cooperatively. One of the first steps of this action is to determine the opinions and attitudes of local people on sustainable cultural tourism. In this paper, Nicosia, the capital city of Cyprus, was chosen as the research area and a survey was conducted with 100 people living in this area in order to measure their perception and attitudes on sustainable cultural tourism and preservation of cultural heritage. SPSS 24.0 statistical package program was used in analyzing the obtained data. Frequency, percentage and chi-square calculations were made. Based on the results of the study, it can be claimed that an environment should be created where people of Nicosia would participate in tourism activities and some plans should be made to realize such an environment.