Relationship between tourist accommodation establishments and natural environment in Eastern Region of Poland

Natural landscape features are considered to be one of the most significant factors determining spatial distribution of tourist traffic in case of long-term holidays. This type of vacations seems to be crucial for economic impact of the tourism, as tourism multiplier points out accommodation as services with largest further turnover. Perception of the natural environment may be very subjective, however some of its elements can be easily measured and compared, thus may be treated as a specific determinant having influence on tourism. Therefore the paper is an attempt to find a statistical relationship, measured by correlation, between the size of forests, protected areas and surface of inland waters, as well as their share in the overall area of administrative units, and the number of beds in tourist accommodation establishments and their occupancy rate in years 2012 and 2014. The research area was Eastern Region of Poland (by NUTS 1 classification), which covers Podlaskie, Lubelskie, Podkarpackie and Świętokrzyskie provinces. The advantage of such delimitation is an analysis of areas with inner landscape diversification, from lake sites and plains in the north, through uplands and low hills in the center, to mountains in the south. Moreover, this region is also famous for the presence of numerous and varied forms of nature conservation. In the paper statistical measures were used and the main source of data were databases of Central Statistical Office of Poland.