The article is a problem-oriented identification of some aspects of tourism in Warsaw, both typical (hotels, restaurants, markets, museums) and unusual (taxi drivers, the right side of the city, lights). However, the authors discuss only some issues related to tourism in Warsaw. In addition, the article tries to show that the capital of Poland – due to various aspects, but mainly because of its rich and dramatic history – is a city with a huge and diverse tourist potential. Despite the efforts of entities involved in the tourism sector, it is a collection of separate elements, rather than a unified whole.

The aim of this paper is to describe geographic differences in the prices of accommodation services offered in the Łódź Metropolitan Area. In this paper, the authors justify the need for their research on a metropolitan area scale, as opposed to research in which the study area is limited to the central city of a metropolis. The authors present a methodology for collecting empirical material and the area of research; however, the focus is only on the issue of the identification of the boundaries of the Łódź Metropolitan Area. Discussing the results of the study, the authors characterize in detail the location of accommodation facilities in the Łódź Metropolitan Area and identify geographic differences in the prices of accommodation services offered by the surveyed companies.

Globalization has strengthened the competitive potential of cities in the tourist market. At the same time, it has forced adaptive and developmental changes within their tourist functions. Internationalization can be viewed as a passive processes of continual changes in tourist, recreational and cultural offerings and in the consumer behaviour of tourists as well as the residents of cities. In addition to the internationalization of tourist offerings and resources, partnership networks and marketing activities, the key challenge is the internationalization of management structures in the tourist industry based on the active involvement of entities responsible for developing tourism in a given city. Such active internationalization processes involve management functions, in which global processes are coupled with local conditions. The paper discusses the internationalization of tourism management in the city in four classic dimensions (functions): planning, organizing, leading and controling. The results of analyses of the internationalization of city tourism management in Poznań shows that the organizing and leading functions are the most difficult to internationalize. As a result, the internationalization process of the planning function is also disturbed and delayed..

For many years, the government of the city Krakow has drawn a lot of attention to the development of business tourism in the city. An example of this is annual research on the convention industry in the city, promotional campaigns for the city of Krakow at key world business tourism trade fairs, and local initiatives transferring knowledge to industry. The convention infrastructure currently under construction in Krakow (four new buildings) as well as the large offering of conference rooms in existing hotels also encourage the use of its potential. The paper analyses the results of studies and data obtained from Poland’s Central Statistical Office to describe the position of Krakow in the business tourism market – also called the convention industry. The city of Krakow is compared to Warsaw – the principal competitor in the country, and several leading Polish cities – Wrocław, Poznań and the Gdansk-Sopot-Gdynia urban area. The relationship between the number of conventions and the number of participants, as well as the number of places in conference rooms was used in the analysis. The results indicate several weak features in the development of business tourism in Krakow and its potential against that of the competition.

The purpose of this article is to describe the opinions and attitudes of the residents of selected municipalities in the Silesian Beskidy Mountains – Brenna, Istebna, Ustroń and Wisła – towards tourists, local tourism development and local goverment actions aimed to stimulate tourism, as well as to determine tourist pressure, as perceived by local communities. The results of survey conducted using a random group of n = 614 individuals indicate high social awareness of the problems usually associated with the development of tourism. The factors that determine the attitudes of local residents towards tourists were found to include the subjectively felt nuisance of tourism and awareness of the economic importance of income from tourism for the local community. The factor differentiating individual attitudes towards tourists and opinions on the commitment and actions taken by local authorities is the amount of financial benefits obtained by the respondents from tourism. A community’ s perception of tourist pressure depends on local geographical conditions, degree of urbanization as well as the seasonal and geographic distribution of incoming tourists. Despite the significant impact of tourism on the local natural and social environment, the surveyed communities continue to desire more local tourism development.

The article consists of two parts. In the first part, the author focuses on definitions connected with the creative sector in the form of creative industries and cultural institutions. In addition, the basic characteristics of the development of creative industries in large cities in Central and Eastern Europe are presented. The goal of the empirical part is the calculation of a comprehensive index based on collected data and the preparation of a cultural attractiveness ranking of regional capital cities in Poland. The analysis includes 18 cities, as two regions – Kujawsko-Pomorskie and Lubuskie – each have two capital cities. The research uses Hellwig’s taxonomic method.