Festivals Effects on the Destination Image in Rural Tourism Regions: The Case of Kusadası Caferli

Abstract

Rural tourism is one of the tourism types, which contributes region's improvement significantly and promotes natural and the cultural resources as well. It is one of the tourism types that is catching more attention increasingly in Turkey and in the World. It becomes popular thanks to its uniqueness and as it can be done in the four seasons of the year, in addition to that, it is an alternate tourism type, that is not consisted of sea-sand-sun trio. Tourism industry a bridge between tourists and civilizations in terms of social and cultural exchange. Tourism is not only an economic income source, but also it is a bridge that provides social and cultural exchange between the tourists and societies. These festivals, which are organized to provide social and cultural exchange, are important attractive reasons for the tourists to prefer the region. Aim of the study is to manifest the festivals' contribution to the Caferli's image, where is connected to Aydın province and Kuşadası district. Semi-structured interview technique, which is among the qualitative research technique, is used in this study. With this aim, interviews have been done with local business owners. Significance of this study is that, it will be a guide for the local business owners who are living in the region and for the other stakeholders by evaluating festivals' effects on rural tourism and contributes to the destination image. Results of this study present information about negative and positive effects on the destination image of festivals in rural tourism. Being as a rural tourism area, in Caferli, flower festival and fall- environment festivals are held twice in a year, which contributed to the Caferli’s development by attracting tourists, is reached as a result.