Investigation of Infrastructure and Recreational Potential of Tourist Routes of Rivers

Tourism exploring rivers became popular after restoration of independence of Lithuania. During the last decade there were many studies made, related to the development of inner water routes’ tourism: many districts created water tourism development strategies, many projects were made concerning development of infrastructure, recreational potential was analysed, the opinion and needs of society were tested. Nevertheless, it did not solve essential problems arising in this subject. Present infrastructure of tourism and the use of recreational resources often do not correspond to the water tourism scale and travelers’ needs. Tourism infrastructure of rivers not always is used according to its original mission. Travelers enjoy more those places that are not meant to be used for recreation and tourism. What influences it? From one side – territories planned for recreation and leisure are designed following legal, nature protection and other compulsory requirements that may not correspond to the anthropo-comfort conditions of society needs or the amount of cultural objects of interest. On the other hand, river tourist routes on high season are used most often for sports, and nearby existing attractive cultural heritage objects often are not part of traveling program. This way, cultural cognitive tourism, using water traveling, absolutely loses its interest and sense. The purpose of the authors of the article is to investigate possibilities of using present infrastructure of river tourist routes and recreational potential, and their adoption for the needs of cultural cognitive tourism. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sace.6.1.4925