| Abstract (english) | The scientific contribution of this research is three-fold: conceptual, methodological and empirical. The conceptual contribution relates to collecting and discussing current theoretical concepts and results of empirical studies on the characteristics and nature of cultural tourism, diverse cultural values contexts and marketing communication processes in culture and tourism. The main theoretical concepts of this work are related to three thematic fields, tourism, culture and communication representing their functional coherence and complementarity. The thesis describes diverse cultural values creation in contexts of cultural tourism from 80-es of the 20th century when cultural tourism was perceived as a special form of tourism to current perceptions that correspond with anthropological definition of culture as local ″way of life″ and everyday practice. The thesis presents a chronological overview of the new communication paradigm in the digital age and modern communication tools as heritage interpretation, branding process, storytelling method. The main purpose of this research was to identify new communication potential of cultural values at the tourist destination level - the city of Zadar, to identify the elements that will improve communication towards a new, digital communication paradigm. Mixed scientific methodology included various stakeholders in cultural tourism: cultural institutions, tourist boards, visitors and experts in tourism and culture. The data were collected from visitors of the historical core of Zadar through a survey-based method using structured questionnaires. In order to identify the most attractive elements of the cultural offer and improve their communication, a survey-based questionnaires were used to examine the tourist interests and preferences for various elements of the cultural offer and their satisfaction with the quality of information. The questionnaire consisted of 52 variables grouped into 9 units related to socio-demographic profile of respondents, travel motivation, communication characteristics, motivation to heritage sites, destination experience, emotional values, preferences for cultural heritage, importance of cultural resources and satisfaction with the quality of information. In order to determine the correlation between perceiving culture and the quality of communication, structured interviews were conducted with experts in culture and tourism. The results of interviews were compared with the survey results regarding three thematic fields: culture as a communication system, relationship between culture and tourism, identity values and communication potential. In order to achieve research objectives on improving communication of cultural institutions with there users website analysis of Zadar cultural institutions and tourist boards were conducted by the method of direct insight, according to the criteria - interactive communication aspects used to define modern and interactive network communication: interactive elements, two-way communication, multimedia content presentation, user participation, connection with social networks. The empirical contribution of the thesis refers is in determing communication potential of cultural identity from the aspect of experts in culture and tourism, tourist interests and preferences for various elements of cultural offer and their satisfaction with information quality and analysis of cultural institutions websites. The research confirmed the hypothesis that Zadar’s cultural institutions do not use the advantages of the Internet platform as a communication tool in a sufficient way. According to the criteria - interactive aspects of communication the results showed that the users are not actively involved in communication by using interactive elements. According to participatory criteria analysis, the results indicated the absence of dialogue between the cultural institutions and their audiences. The results of survey-based questionnaire showed that tourist most preferred element of the cultural offer is everyday life culture and that the tourist preferences are positively related to their perception of the information quality about entire cultural offer of the destination except the everyday life culture. The results of the research also showed that everyday life culture is the most important element of the Zadar’s cultural offer. The data showed the main positive impact of representational quality information (comprehensibility and interestingness) to the increased tourist preferences for cultural heritage. Results indicated that availability and usefulness of the information did not influence the intention to visit on cultural and historical heritage. Interest in cultural events is positively related to all information quality elements. Interest in famous people and historical events would be positively influenced only by the element of contextual quality of information, in other words, communicativeness and timeliness of information. However, tourist preferences for everyday life culture was not significantly related to quality elements, meaning that preference for everyday life culture would be equal regardless of any element of information quality. The results of analysis of data collection used in qualitative research - expert interviews showed that perceiving culture in its broadest sense as a ″way of life″ can positively affect the perception of identity and culture as a communication potential. Compared results of survey questionnaire and structured interview showed that cultural tourism experts and tourist define identically "Zadar’s way of life" and that they agree about unique attractions. The results related to the perceived relationship between culture and tourism showed that all respondents perceiving culture as identity system that communicate certain values and unique characteristic of local destination, people and their culture. Perceiving culture in its broadest sense as a ″way of life″, experts in tourism and culture agreed that tourist destination narrative should be based on its cultural offering and culture identity should represent a key element to the city-brand development. In accordance with the theoretical concepts and the results of the research, a conceptual communication model was developed at the tourist destination level - the city of Zadar, based on local cultural identity at the centre of tourist communication. |
