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Due to a dynamic increase of the number of tourists, to demand and supply changes, or – in short – to changes of paradigm, tourism has been recently considered as an important factor of regional development. Countries and regions attempt to encourage tourism development with modern planning. An overview of selected planning documents, mostly regional, leads to the conclusion that in spite of a declarative adoption of the new paradigm on the strategic level, the operational level is still dominated by the old approach, based on a number of myths. These myths should be considered main obstacles in tourism development in Poland.

The tourism sector plays an important role in regional economies. Its growth could become a driver of socio-economic development of different areas in Poland. The increasing number of visiting tourists has a positive impact on the labour market, and it stimulates entrepreneurship in other regions’ service sectors. Even though some Polish regions have great potential, there persist some substantial barriers to development of tourism: poor state of technical infrastructure, especially transport, significant dispersion of the sector, lack of tourism products, and poor promotion. As no separate policy dedicated to tourism is provided at the European Union level, the development of this sector can be financed from cohesion policy funds. The paper focuses on the use of EU funds for the development of tourism in the Warmia-Mazury region. The results of the analysis show a positive – albeit limited – impact of implemented projects on tourist attractiveness and on competitiveness of tourism sector firms. The effectiveness of the projects is limited due to low interest in cooperation in creating tourism products and to over-investment effects in some projects.

Tourist sector belongs to most dynamic sectors able to absorb large and different human resources. Its chances to get developed depend not only on natural and cultural resources, but also increasingly on necessary infrastructure and appropriate development policy. While Polish natural resources were mostly overvalued, the cultural ones were seemed to be underestimated. In general most of the Polish territory does not have significant touristic resources and its chances to develop touristic sector depends to a large extent on ability to create touristic products and on involvement into networks with other, better equipped regions. The state policy should concentrate scarce development resources on 1. areas already touristically developed in order to improve their competitiveness and 2. support to diffusion processes and cooperation network creating.

Tourism can cause changes in various areas of life of receptive societies. Each of them can be of functional or dysfunctional character. A lot depends on the type of tourism and the visited society itself. Tourism is seen as a vital development factor in the Podhale region. It is therefore crucial to know what the local people think about tourism. Their negative attitude to this particular sector of the economy can hinder or limit its development.

The main focus of the text is the city tourism viewed as a form of city promotion on which the city development depends to a great extent. At the beginning of the industrial age, tourism concentrated around the sea resorts and spas. The first changes in tourism resulted from the decline of the paradigm of the industrial progress in western countries. The decaying cities previously bound up with industry started then to change the image in order to improve their economic situation. The new image pointed out culture in the first place, because culture started being perceived as the tourist attraction. The article presents the different ways of city promotion. The particular stress is placed here upon public space investments – such as revitalization phenomena, theme space and commercialization of urban landscape and constructing the museums and other public use buildings by the outstanding architects. The development of the urban tourism is also closely tied up with the changes in tourists’ behaviour and preferences. The phenomena presented in this article explain the increasing interest in the city as the tourist attraction and emphasise the indispensability of the promotion efforts.

The article is discusses the new concept of harmony limit as an instrument for strategic management of tourism development in tourism destinations. In the author’s opinion, that concept can be used as a basic instrument in creating tourism development strategies, which would help to start or continue the process of developing sustainable tourism. Furthermore, the concept is based on three interdependent elements: pillars of sustainability, multi-stakeholder responsibility and the sphere of needs. The author draws attention to the problems associated with the new concept and offers certain solutions, thereby demonstrating its application value.

The paper focuses on the assessment of the role of tourism in the development of towns and cities of the Warmian-Masurian voivodeship. The respondents, representatives of town halls, claim that tourism is important and has an impact on economic development of towns and cities. However, nature and wildlife of the Warmia and Masuria regions are not the key tourist attraction of the regions’ towns and cities. The respondents say that each town and city should build its own unique brand rather than relying on the region’s or a dominating city’s brand. It is however useful for the towns and cities of the regions to cooperate in order to promote the tourist product.

Interaction between human beings and their environment is a relatively new science domain, placed between geography and sociology. Therefore, a theoretical part of this article aims at familiarizing the readers with perception issue. In the following part one can find a description of perception of the Bieszczady National Park by tourists, adult inhabitants and pupils from Bieszczady region. It is compared to the similar research conducted in the Tatra National Park. One of the findings is that tourists are better familiarized with the mountain geography than any other group. What is also interesting, people find national parks bigger and more empty than they are in reality. Some of the theories presented at the beginning of the article were confirmed by the author’`s reseearch.

Dynamic tourism development has resulted in equally dynamic growth of tourism industry, being the major source of income. Tourism development strategies are based on different concepts of economic growth which do not answer all questions. Among them is the issue of success factors: what makes certain localities enjoy fast tourism development while other similar places have problems? Against many beliefs on the significance of natural resources, more important are cultural assets and in particular development of tourist infrastructure and products. Having this in mind one should look for success factors in quality of human resources, elites and leadership.

The main aim of the article is to test Richard Butler’s model of tourist destination lifecycle in relation to Benidorm – one of the most important Spanish seaside resorts. Benidorm is an example of extreme changes in the landscape caused by a large number of skyscrapers. The analysis of Benidorm’s history from 14th to 16th century and its photographs allowed us to identify phases of this resort’s cycle. Supply and demanded features, infrastructure, the degree of landscape change and management priorities were also taken into consideration. Particular attention was paid to the reorientation stage. Using statistical data, the authors verified how effective the reorientation of Benidorm’s tourism economy was. Moreover, in order to show a wide background of the issues discussed, the main characteristics of development stages of mass tourism were presented (based on ten examples of second generation seaside resorts).

Tourism is often treated as a solution for all development problems of every Polish local government. However, even the most popular tourism resorts do not always take the economic advantage of it. The economic impact of tourism is often lower that it could have been expected. The case study given in the article is Mikolajki – the most popular tourism resort in Mazury region, but very common as far as local government’s revenues are concerned. Why? This article gives at least a partial response for the question.