CYCLING TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN ISTRIA COUNTY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF LOCAL STAKEHOLDERS

Sustainable tourism development in the destination can be strengthened by connecting sports and tourism into a unique form of tourism -sports tourism.Cycling tourism is one of the most popular parts of sports tourism, but the efficient development of cycling tourism implies the involvement of local stakeholders.The main goal of the research presented in the paper was to determine to what extent the local stakeholders in cycling tourism, based on the experience gained so far, consider that cycling tourism contributes to the benefit and sustainable tourism development in Istria County and which elements they considered as the most important to make the development of cycling tourism possible.The results show that continuous collaboration and education and the involvement of the local community are the keys to development of cycling tourism in the destination and that cycling tourism has a positive effect on economic, environmental and socio-cultural sustainability.Also, cycling tourism can influence the reduction of tourism seasonality in tourism destinations.A linear combination of variables -Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was used for data analysis in the combination with Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test and the measurement of the reliability by the Cronbach's alpha coefficient.The results of the study can serve as an informative background on the future planning of cycling tourism in Istria and other similar Mediterranean destinations.