Regional Identity in the Context of Measuring the Socio-Economic Attributes of Tourist Destinations in Slovakia

The main objective of the study is to identify generally measurable socioeconomic and demographic indicators of tourist destinations in Slovakia, divided according to the level of existential conditions, standard of living, relational needs, and awareness of the population, and, through their measurement, to evaluate the level of the Regional Identity Index in the studied territories. In the processing of the selected issue, quantitative research is applied, according to the authors Rosičová et al. (2016), in the form of calculating the Regional Identity Index (IRI). It determines the level of IRI of selected regions, according to which the level of competitiveness of tourist destinations can also be determined. Twenty-four selected factors are examined, divided into four groups: existential conditions, standard of living, relational needs, and awareness of the region’s inhabitants. The study sets two research questions, dealing with the examination of the level of regional identity of individual tourist destinations, and the overall average regional identity of the regions in the years studied. The results of the study show that the highest level of IRI is achieved by the Bratislava region tourist destination (a value of 57.15 in 2024) and the lowest value in the monitored period is the Košice region (a value of 23.70 in 2023, and 25.42 in 2024).