RECOGNITION OF TRADITIONAL HANDICRAFTS AS CULTURAL VALUES TO TOURISM: A MODEL SUGGESTION FOR AFYONKARAHISAR
Süleyman Toy, Uğur Çalişkan
DOI: 10.35666/25662880.2017.3.220
UDC: 339.485:39(560 Afyonkarahisar)
Abstract: From 2000s and on, product diversification initiatives in tourism have gained momentum based on ever-changing context of tourism experiences. Such experiences that shed light into respect to nature and traditional culture instead of mass tourism activities have become focal point both for tourism supply and demand. Within this development trend, culture tourism is one of the most increasing-developing tourism activity among others. Culture tourism underpins to serve natural and cultural attractions, cultural activities and popular artworks as a tourism value. It also offers an opportunity to gain economic value for traditional handicrafts for developing destinations. Thus, certain handicrafts rarely used in daily life could be marketed as a cultural value and they generate economic income for the region. Setting off with this fact, it is aimed in this research to carry out a model in order to make the traditional handicrafts of Afyonkarahisar into touristic assets. Afyonkarahisar has a wide range of characteristic handicrafts such as making felt, harness craft for horses, making horse carriage, blacksmithing and copper craft, hand-printed head-scarf making and etc. After all, most of these crafts are manufactured low in numbers due to the absence of craftsmen. On the other hand, all these handicrafts are valuable to serve as a part of culture tourism. Therefore, within this scope, firstly, an inventory including handicrafts and craftsmen in the region was conducted. Then, a SWOT analyses was performed to traditional handicrafts in Afyonkarahisar. Finally, a model was built in line with strategic planning and some suggestions/explanations were made concerning the model.
Key words: Culture Tourism, Traditional Handicrafts, Marketing, Strategic Planning