Promotion of the cultural heritage of Mediterranean city in the scope of upgrading cultural tourism

Abstract

World and especially European trends of tourist economy are mainly focused on development of diversity in cultural tourism. Cultural tourism is a complex of numerous activities that enables not only the affirmation of cultural-historic motives, but also provides important resources for renewal of cultural-historic monuments, tangible and intangible heritage and resources. Today, there is no serious and ambitious country that does not prefer development of tourism in its development strategies as a planetary phenomenon and development sector. This specially refers to cultural tourism, as a competitive segment, based on local authenticity, unique areas, urban entities and ambiance, different historic layers and monuments, local tradition, myths and customs, affirmative mentality of population, geographic and ecological resources, in brief - complex and original identity of its area and its population. Cultural tourism in Montenegro has a modest tradition and only recently through valuable but sporadic initiatives and encouragements from Europe, attempts to valorize its own potentials, making them competitive through creative projects and programs. It is most certainly that the Montenegrin coast is a deeply settled part of complex Mediterranean cultural sphere that possesses certain characteristics which marks it as a unique cultural space in which different historical, geographic, confessional and other influences from surroundings intersect, predefining it for development of cultural tourism. This paper represents an effort to create a professional study report, although limited to single destination - city of Budva that treats cultural tourism in correlation with evaluation of renewal and use of cultural-historic and built heritage. From the mentioned reasons and within described context, this paper tends to be a small, but precisely created contribution to the future actions of creating complex tourist offer at Montenegrin coast, especially in Budva as its 'capital', as it is often emphasized with reasonable expectations in public.