Restoring abandoned estates through tourism: Visitor friendly test as a tool

This is a report on a research project on the development of a model for tourist development of abandoned rural settlements and estates. In the project we used the Visitor Friendly Test, known as Kotler's test, taking into consideration basic questions for testing place friendliness suggested by Philip Kotier, Donald Haider and Irving Rein (1993). The Kotier — Haider — Rein test attracted our attention because of a great interest in it among the tourism experts. As the test had never been carried out before, we developed it in such a way that it could be used in practice. The pilot project was carried out on an example of a (lesser developed) tourist community Tr□iè. Test evaluation was made on the basis of experiences gained through development and implementation of the test. This article explains the developmental process of the test, weights, problems and some results. The basic aim of the pilot project was to evaluate the test potential for further use in testing visitor friendliness of places and its usefulness in the tourism development model for abandoned estates where the possibility of measuring the actual customer expectations and perceptions do not yet exist.