Since Slovakia's accession to the EU, European funds have become an important source of financing for regional development, which are provided on the basis of elaborated regional development programs at various hierarchical levels.... more
Since Slovakia's accession to the EU, European funds have become an important source of financing for regional development, which are provided on the basis of elaborated regional development programs at various hierarchical levels. The Environment area has become an inevitable priority area of each such document responding to the current state and quality of environmental components in accordance with sustainable development. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the allocation of funds for the Environment priority area in the Nitra Self-governing Region during 2014 – 2018. The funds were identified for individual measures according to the districts of the region while the focus of projects and sources of their financing were also evaluated. Several methods were used, such as system analysis (grouping and evaluation of information), comparative analysis in creating own databases, mathematical-statistical methods, etc. During the individual years, an average of more than 50 million...
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Orava Castle is one of the most important monuments of castle architecture in Slovakia. Along with its exceptionally impressive location, it is one of the main elements of the tourist attractiveness of the Orava region for national and... more
Orava Castle is one of the most important monuments of castle architecture in Slovakia. Along with its exceptionally impressive location, it is one of the main elements of the tourist attractiveness of the Orava region for national and foreign tourism. The aim of the paper is to evaluate the current and future potential of the Orava Castle locality in the tourism as well as in the regional development. The basic evaluations are based on data on attendance of Orava Castle in 2013-2018. We evaluate the structure of visitors according to individual months. The processed statistical information points to an annual increase in the number of visitors with maximum values during the summer months. The structure of visitors by nationality has been dominated by Slovaks for a long time, followed by Poles, Hungarians and Czechs. Special attention we paid to the spatial dimensions of the castle attendance where we use the density coefficient. Another part of the paper is devoted to marketing act...
The research was aimed at identifying changes in tourist traffic – religious tourism and museum tourism to the Museum of the Holy Father John Paul II Family Home in Wadowice in 1996–2019. The museum was opened in 1984 in the house where... more
The research was aimed at identifying changes in tourist traffic – religious tourism and museum tourism to the Museum of the Holy Father John Paul II Family Home in Wadowice in 1996–2019. The museum was opened in 1984 in the house where Karol Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II, was born in 1920. The thorough reconstruction between 2010 and 2014 resulted in the establishment of a museum with a modern multimedia narrative exhibition. In recent years, the museum has been visited by more than 200 thousand tourists a year, including 40 thousand foreigners from more than 100 countries worldwide. During the years 1996–2019 the number of international tourists rose more than twice. The greatest boom in the visits to the museum was noted in 2005 and was associated with the disease, death, funeral, and increasing worship of Pope John Paul II. Following decreased interest in visits to the museum during the period of 2010–2014, which was due to the museum renovation, a revival and increase in visits to...
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All regions with dispersed settlements have a special type of geographic character which is conditioned by the arrangement of settlements, depending on geology and surface, soils and forest cover area. The creation of this specific... more
All regions with dispersed settlements have a special type of geographic character which is conditioned by the arrangement of settlements, depending on geology and surface, soils and forest cover area. The creation of this specific settlement is affected by other factors, e.g. population movements caused by military events. Base of dispersed settlements are particularly highlands, the amount of which varies most often between 500 800 m.a.s.l. In mountain areas, dispersed settlements are found in mountain valleys or on the hillsides generally performed from one central village. The human factor worked for the transformation of forest to pasture, then the fields so in most of those areas have been dispersed settlements character. The article analyzes the settlement of Slovakia on the example of "Novobanska stalova" area. Based on the knowledge of the settlement of the region as well as field research, objective is to identify the contribution of changes in land use in the co...
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Pupils acquire the first cartographic knowledge and skills already in primary education, particularly, within the subject called “Regional Studies (in Slovak - Vlastiveda)”. The aim of the paper is a comparative analysis of the ability of... more
Pupils acquire the first cartographic knowledge and skills already in primary education, particularly, within the subject called “Regional Studies (in Slovak - Vlastiveda)”. The aim of the paper is a comparative analysis of the ability of pupils in the 4th grade at primary schools to use cartographic language in real life using a selected sample from the Slovak Republic and Czech Republic. In the first step, the researched group of pupils was motivated by dialogs and discussions about maps. The next step was the implementation of the survey which was based on text assignment (story) containing various information. On the basis of this story, pupils should construct a map. Assessment of the level of using cartographic language by individual pupils was carried out through 11 selected criteria (e.g. spatial links, hierarchy, relative distance, elevation, qualitative and quantitative characteristics). Finally, we compared the results between pupils in the Slovak Republic and Czech Repub...
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Many travelers whose main motivation is religious tourism (Catholic) have visited the major shrines such as the Holy Land, the Vatican, Lourdes (France) and Fatima (Portugal). After having been in those places/shrines, numerous religious... more
Many travelers whose main motivation is religious tourism (Catholic) have visited the major shrines such as the Holy Land, the Vatican, Lourdes (France) and Fatima (Portugal). After having been in those places/shrines, numerous religious tourists want to visit other sanctuaries but not many programs offer that possibility. With that in mind, three researchers drove from Lisbon (Portugal) to Levoča (Slovakia) nearly always stopping along Marian midsize shrines. The data collected by participant observation allowed the researchers to design three different itineraries they include the most important Marian midsize shrines and also towns/small cities along the way. On the one hand, this paper has a strong practical component in order to be used as a reflective tool by the travel agents/tour operators; on the other hand, academics can use the programs as training material for student exercises, demonstrating that an itinerary is not only a set of thematic resources but also used for tim...
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Progress and modernization of society does not bring only positive events and results, but also undesirable drawbacks, an example of which is the poverty. Poverty exists in every society, in terms of its economic and social reasons also... more
Progress and modernization of society does not bring only positive events and results, but also undesirable drawbacks, an example of which is the poverty. Poverty exists in every society, in terms of its economic and social reasons also in different geographical dimensions. Timeliness and relevance of this social phenomenon is also evident from other statistical surveys in EU countries. Whereas in 2013 was 122.6 million of EU population at risk of poverty or social exclusion (24.5 % of the population), the EU decided to include the fight against the poverty and social exclusion in the new programming period 2014 – 2020 as one of the five major objectives in the Europe 2020 Strategy. Poverty reduction is a priority of the Visegrad Group (V4) countries, which are characterized not only spatial, but also economic homogeneity. In this paper we analyse the selected indicators of poverty (e.g. from the area of unemployment, income, education, etc.) in the common geographical area of the V...
The new programming period 2021 – 2017 brings a new philosophy of integration - in the emergence of integrated territorial strategies (ITS) and their financing through integrated territorial investments (ITI). The aim of the paper is,... more
The new programming period 2021 – 2017 brings a new philosophy of integration - in the emergence of integrated territorial strategies (ITS) and their financing through integrated territorial investments (ITI). The aim of the paper is, based on the above reasons, to evaluate the project activities of the microregion Termál considering the implemented projects in the programming periods 2007 – 2013 and 2014 – 2020 (ex-post evaluation) as well as the readiness of the area for financial resources in the programming period 2021 – 2027 (ex-ante evaluation). In terms of methodology, we used the comparative analysis of various information sources (mainly Programs of economic development and social development of municipalities, microregion Termál and databases of the Department of Strategic Activities of the Municipality of Nitra Region) and standard statistical and cartographic methods leading to data processing and visualization. The results provide information on the diversification of o...
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Tourism is one of the most dynamic sectors of the economy in Slovakia. With the orientation of localities to tourism, the landscape transformation is reflected in several positive and negative changes in the landscape. The aim of the... more
Tourism is one of the most dynamic sectors of the economy in Slovakia. With the orientation of localities to tourism, the landscape transformation is reflected in several positive and negative changes in the landscape. The aim of the contribution is to highlight the transformation processes leading to the creation of a tourist landscape in six selected localities in Slovakia. When selecting sites, we applied criteria such as the diversity of the original use, size or attractiveness. The environmental, socio-cultural and economic impacts of tourism on the landscape of localities were valuable in terms of sustainable development principles. From the methodological point of view, the primary methodology was the drivers–pressures–state–impact–response (DPSIR) model, used for integrated environmental assessment and the life cycle methodology of a tourism center with integrated sustainable development indicators. In the work results, based on the analysis of the historical development and...
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The last 30 years of brewing history in Slovakia were the most turbulent ones. They were influenced by the liquidation of some beer production as well as privatization, integration and acquisitions of global beer producers. As a reaction... more
The last 30 years of brewing history in Slovakia were the most turbulent ones. They were influenced by the liquidation of some beer production as well as privatization, integration and acquisitions of global beer producers. As a reaction to the uniform taste of beer produced by the global producers, numerous small craft breweries emerged in Slovakia trying to return the specific beer taste to the regions. Their importance may also be involved in the development of popular beer tourism through beer routes in addition to the fragmentation of the Slovak brewing industry. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the potential of Slovakia for the development of beer routes. The examination and assessment of the possibilities of creating beer routes in Slovakia required considering the historical context first, and then establishing a database comprising the list of craft breweries in Slovakia and the list of places where beer festivals are organised. Correspondence with the President of the ...
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The Slovak education is currently experiencing a turbulent period associated with ongoing efforts to reform the education system, under-funding of education with low teacher salaries, overworked and feminized teaching staff, low social... more
The Slovak education is currently experiencing a turbulent period associated with ongoing efforts to reform the education system, under-funding of education with low teacher salaries, overworked and feminized teaching staff, low social status of a teacher in society, problems in the creation and distribution of current textbooks, insufficient interest in studying natural sciences, leaving of young people to study abroad, etc. This situation is also reflected in the training of future teachers including the geography teachers (in combination with other subjects). The aim of this study is to provide basic information on the development of future geography teacher education in Nitra, which has almost a 60-year tradition. Moreover, it characterizes the current state of this education in the context of the subject field didactics and pedagogical practice and identifies the challenges of their future preparation. Methods of text analysis, information comparison, and statistical processing...