Acta Innovations

5-14

Authors: Tomasz Napierała

Presented collection of articles constitutes the summary of research undertaken by the editor and the authors within the scope of the project entitled “Tourism for the Region Integrated Program of Development for Doctoral Students”, financed from European Union funds within the scope of the European Social Fund. Articles present conclusions from research on the quality of tourism management in the region of Lodz. They were confronted with the assessment of the effectiveness of the process in the Norwegian Oppland County, performed during the execution of the aforementioned project, and mainly during a studio visit conducted in the first week of May 2012.

43-61

Authors: Maciej Adamiak, Tomasz Napierała

In this paper, the authors determined the specific features of the construction of budgets in Poland and Norway and showed areas of tourism occurrence in the budget classifications of both countries. Then, thoroughly analysed the expenditures made by municipalities and counties of the Lodz region, booked in the financial accounts which content was strongly connected with tourism. Authors had focused on direct relationship, as well as indirect effects on the development of tourism through promotion, development of culture and sport. The obtained results were compared with corresponding values observed in the Norwegian county of Oppland and its municipalities. It should be emphasized that by completing the research project, authors gained knowledge to identify strengths and weaknesses of the of local budgets in Poland and Norway. Flexibility of classification and the high comparability of local government units\\\' budgets at all levels are the main advantages of Polish budgets. On the other hand, the precise description of budgets and high quality of official statistics are undoubtedly advantages of Norwegian local government budgets. The fact is that the resources available to the Norwegian local authorities, even after taking into account the difference between purchasing power of the Norwegian krone and Polish zloty, are objectively higher. It is worth noting that the amount of funds allocated to finance specific activities, such as those related to the development of tourism, cannot be equated with the efficiency of their spending. However this question was not the subject of research undertaken by the authors. Described research project gives the authors the ability to assess the position of tourism in the Polish and Norwegian budget classification. Although the Polish classification revealed a dedicated account that was directly connected with tourism, at the same time it was diagnosed to have minor importance in planning and constructing local budgets. Therefore, the problem with both Polish and Norwegian budgets is the lack of possibilities to perform simple estimations of the amount of resources assigned to the areas of tourism development. The authors suggest to perform a specific study within this range and develop a diagnosis of individual tasks financed by the government and determine the degree of their impact on the development of tourism in the municipalities or counties. Therefore they hope that this article will be a contribution to make further research on the importance of tourism in local government budgets.