TOURISM PLANNING AND POLICY IN SELECTED MOUNTAINOUS AREAS OF GREECE

Abstract

Mountains occupy approximately one/fifth of the total surface of the earth and have been progressively transformed into important tourist destinations. Many developed countries have traced and implemented remarkable state interventions to promote tourism development in their mountain areas. State planning, fundamentally, intervenes in a compensating and balancing way, creating the necessary terms and conditions for the smooth formation of the necessary tourist capital at national, regional and local level. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of the state tourism policy in selected mountain prefectures of Greece (Ioannina, Evritania and Kastoria), according to the mountain zone typology used by UNEPWCMC. The evaluation of the three entirely mountain prefectures according to selected aspects of the tourism policy implemented and the hotel evolutionary geographical distribution highlights a policy gap as regards tourism development in the Greek mountain areas; such tourism development has been progressively incorporated in the general regionalisation policy adopted of Greek tourism.