Leisure boat tourism: residents’ attitudes towards nautical tourism development

Purpose The paper analyses how leisure boat tourism impacts are perceive by local communities in coastal areas. For this purpose a review of the literature on nautical and leisure boat tourism, together with residents’ attitudes is presented. On that basis, authors consider economic, socio-cultural and environmental impacts, together with general development and future policies of nautical tourism and cluster the coastal community according to their attitudes toward leisure boat tourism. Design/methodology/approach Primary data is collected among residents of coastal municipalities in the north part of the Adriatic Sea. Within the theoretical framework of social representation, a cluster analysis is performed on 233 valid questionnaires, collected during winter 2013. Findings Interviewed residents believe that leisure boating has a long tradition and has offered improvements to the municipalities as tourism destinations. They consider leisure boat tourism as a catalyst for tourism development and international tourists’ attraction. The cluster analysis reveals the existence of three homogeneous groups of residents labelled as: supporters (51%), cautious (29%) and sceptics (20%). Practical implications Practical implications are derived for destination managers and DMO in addressing internal marketing and larger advertisement of the positive impacts leisure boat tourism has over the local community. Originality/value The paper enriches the discussion on residents’ perceptions on nautical tourism and specifically on leisure boat tourism in coastal areas. Limitations are linked to the exploratory nature of the research paper, the sample and the geographical connotation of the study area. Further research will enlarge the data collection to a wider number of coastal communities and integrate results with qualitative analysis.