LOCAL RESIDENTS AWARENESS ON CULTURAL TOURISM POTENTIAL OF OHRID

Tourist development of small places with great tourist potential has an influence on the quality and style of living of local residents. On the other hand, tourism development is determined by the local people awareness of the tourist potential and their activities in the field of tourism. When creating tourist offer of a place, local people opinion must be considered for its potentials and guidelines of tourist development. Very often their way of thinking is determined by their knowledge of the tourist values of their hometown. Promotion of certain values won’t be much helpful if the local population is not aware of the heritage that is surrounding them and if they devalue it on different ways of acting. The purpose of this paper is to examine the opinion of the local population in Ohird for the tourist potential of the place and the tourist values of Ohrid they are recognizing. Afterword, we’ll examine if local people are aware of cultural heritage as a tourist value of Ohrid and if they recognize cultural potential of Ohrid as a tourist brand. Therefore, we’ll try to realize basic directions for tourism development of Ohrid given by the local residents