Turystyka i rekreacja a jakość życia mieszkańców Leszna

The quality of life (QOL) is currently one of the main fields of study for researchers around the world. Its complex nature makes it a topic of interest for many different fields, such as philosophy, ethics, medicine, economics, sociology and physical culture sciences. Despite the differences in the way various researches define the QOL, the general agreement is that any measurement of QOL should encompass the following dimensions: objective QOL and subjective QOL (well-being). Particularly noteworthy, for any complex research is the mutual relationship between the QOL and tourism and recreation. The increase of tourism and recreation should entail a simultaneous development of local communities, as emphasized by Crouch and Ritchie this implies that the inhabitants of an area that serves a function of tourism and recreation should profit from the increased number of tourists. This benefits should be reflected in the objective QOL conditions and the subjective sense of satisfaction of the residents. The city of Leszno and it’s tourism and recreation-oriented development strategy were used to form a basis for theoretical study on QOL and to calculate the Tourism-Recreation QOL Index.

Percepcja walorów turystycznych przez osoby niesłyszące na tle słyszącej części społeczeństwa w Polsce

The article aims at showing similarities and differences in the perception of tourist attractions among tourists with and without hearing impairment. The first part depicts perception problems from the theoretical point of view. Complexities of studies on the perception system have been described. The perception itself is channelled via senses, including mainly sight (reception of approximately 87% of outside factors), hearing (7%), smell (3–5%), touch (1–5%) and taste (1%) (Visual Landscape… 1994, after: Pietrzak 2008). The data suggests that people with hearing impairment, owing to dominative position of sight perception and to other senses (except hearing), should perceive outside factors similarly to people with no hearing impairment, also in terms of tourist attractions. Is this really a fact? The attempt to answer this question resulted in conducting questionnaire study among the tourists, both with and without hearing impairment. The data was collected, based on questionnaire study, conducted nationwide in years 2004–2010 among the 292 deaf (for whom Polish Sign Language is the main method of communication) and 1780 people without hearing impairment. The aim of this study was to reveal, if tourists with hearing dysfunction have different tourist preferences than those without any hearing disabilities and to indicate which tourist attractions are the most significant for tourists with hearing impairment. The percentage values and the level of signi-ficance (p), calculated on the basis of Pearson’s chi-square test (with border value of p ≤ 0.05), were used in the analysis It was determined, that in case of perception of natural tourist attractions, there is a major similarity (both, people with and without hearing impairment indicated such attractions as sea, lake, clean natural environment, natural landscape, climate and diversified land relief, including mountains). As far as cultural attractions are concerned, a similarity in perception of both studied groups can also be observed. The most popular attractions include those, which can be perceived with sight: monuments, historic landmarks, museums, open-air museums, places of worship and modern architecture. The biggest differences are related to culture and entertainment, which indicates a social aspect of the disability of people with hearing impairment (a discomfort of being in environ-ment, where sound is the main carrier of information). The conclusions from the conducted analyses are applicative in their nature. They contain hints for tour operators, involved in creating tourist offer for people using Polish Sign Language, taking into account their preferences, perception abilities and ensuring pleasant tourist experience.

Attitudes of Future Tourism Sector Employees Towards Organise Accessible Tourism

The aim of this paper is to show a theoretical approach to the evolution of concepts perceiving disability, taking into account the medical, social, and geographical models, as the basis for the development of principles concerning the organisation of accessible tourism for people with disabilities (PwD). The main research objective was to identify the current attitudes of future, potential employees in the tourism (tourism and recreation students at the time of the study) towards accessible tourism. The study was based on surveys performed in May 2013 at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (UAM, Poland) and the State University in Irkutsk (ИГУ, Russia), a total sample of 216 people. The main section of the survey contained four questions regarding issues such as: optimal ways to organise tourism products for people with a disability; attitudes towards spending leisure time together with people with a disability; and specific requirements concerning the introduction of various types of improvements in tourism products aimed at people with a disability. In both cases, the results revealed that future tourism employees hold attitudes which are prevailingly open and positive towards the needs of tourists with disabilities. However, the hypothesis that the main factor influencing a reluctance to enter into contact with PwD is a lack of experience in this area, resulting in insufficient knowledge of what conditions the behaviour of PwD was also confirmed. This is a highly significant conclusion which should consider if mandatory educational programmes in the field of tourism and recreation studies are to be improved.