Development of accommodation and gastronomic facilities in Spała in the light of centrographic measures

Abstract

Tourist development of individual destinations, regions or larger areas is one of the main factors influencing the standard of tourist service. In the article, there is presented the tourist development of Spała – a well-known Polish holiday resort in Łódź Province. It is a locality with a developed tourist function, which is changing considerably, like many other functions in Poland, in the market economy era. Some changes regard tourist infrastructure. The aim of the article was to give a chronological presentation of the evolution of accommodation and gastronomic facilities in Spała, from the turn of the 19^th and 20^th century until the present time. The problem was analysed from the historical and spatial point of view. The own study point to the most important features of the infrastructure, with respect to its size, functions and use. The methods of data collecting included basic field research methods, such as query, inventory, observation and interviews with the owners of facilities. The spatial analysis method was based on centrographic measures, using the concepts of a centroid, distance standard deviation and the standard deviation ellipsis. As a result, the own study defined the direction of changes taking place within the space of Spała under the influence of the transformations in accommodation and gastronomic facilities, as well as pointed to the usefulness of centrographic measures in the spatial analysis of tourism phenomena.