Determining the development level of Cappadocia tourism

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the perceptions of local people living in Cappadocia towards economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts of tourism and to group them according to their perceptions. Another aim of the study is to reveal the stage of tourism development in Cappadocia by utilizing the Doxey's Irritation Index Model and Butler's Tourism Area Life Cycle Model (TALC) in conjunction with data on local perceptions. For this purpose, questionnaire technique which is one of the quantitative research methods were applied to the local population. The population of this research is the local people living in Urgup, Goreme, Avanos and Uchisar, where tourism intensity is high in Cappadocia. 394 data were obtained with convenience sampling method. In the analysis of data, central tendency measures and clustering analysis were used. As a result of the study, the local people are divided into 5 groups according to their perception of the tourism impacts. The perception average of the local residents shows that they are at the stage of “apathy” in tourism in the Irridex Model. It is also concluded that Cappadocia is in the “development” stage of the Tourism Area Life Cycle.