ORGANIZED TRAVEL VS INDIVIDUAL TRAVEL – THE CASE OF SARAJEVO

Abstract

Sarajevo is a very interesting tourist destination. The official statistics of Canton Sarajevo show that tourists usually visit Sarajevo individually. The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences between foreign tourists who came to Sarajevo individually and the ones whose travel was organized by a travel agency. The aim of this research is to compare foreign tourists from the aspect of the travel mode in relation to the declaration of tourists’ satisfaction with a tourist destination, the general quality of this tourist destination offer, overall satisfaction, and loyalty. For the purposes of data analysis, descriptive statistics and Mann–Whitney U test were used. The results have shown that foreign tourists who visited Sarajevo individually have a more positive attitude about perceived value, declaration of tourists’ satisfaction with a tourist destination, and they are more willing to revisit Sarajevo in the future than the foreign tourists who visited through a travel agency / another organizer. Also, it has been shown that there is no statistically significant difference between visitors who visited Sarajevo individually and tourists who visited through a travel agency / another organizer in terms of the general quality of the tourist destination offer, overall satisfaction, and intention to recommend Sarajevo to their friends and relatives.