Basic Problems and Mistakes in the Use of SWOT Analysis in Tourism Development Strategies of Communes

SWOT analysis is among the most popular and most commonly used methods of strategic analysis for creation of document of different types from business plans to strategic plans and strategies. This tool has also gained popularity among territorial self-governments units preparing their strategic documents, including tourism development strategies. The hypothesis that this high popularity is followed by shallowing of its idea and popularisation of few important mistakes in conduction of the analysis is made in the paper. Those mistakes are: wrong interpretation of “opportunities”; no reflection on meaning of particular strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats; no justification for appointing particular items; over-optimism and objective reflection missing. As the hypothesis implies only the fact that the mistakes are made from time to time and not that making them becomes a rule, it is enough to verify this hypothesis by appointing existence of stated mistakes in randomly chosen ten strategies of tourism development of ten Polish communities. The strategies were selected by typing the phrase: “strategia rozwoju turystyki w gminie” (community tourism development strategy) to bing.com search engine and selection of first ten records from the received list.