Tourism offers something else – intangible and short - term services for which there is a global competition. It is also unstable due to actual (in) securities and it depends on political circumstances; tourism is, in fact, comparable to any other industry. It is determined by its most significant market characteristics: tourists (consumers) have subjective ideas and preferences and choose the offer that will best meet their needs. It is therefore essential to know and understand all the ideas that a tourist may have about his/her dream vacation, honeymoon to remember, adventure travel, educational travel, or a vacation that simply includes enjoying the beauty of culture. A tourist organization or a destination needs to understand the ideas of consumers in order to be able to design the offer that would best suit the consumers’ preferences, thus increasing the sale, (preferably) satisfaction and ultimately, the likelihood of a repeated purchase of the (tourism) product in question. It is necessary to substantiate the comprehension of consumers with knowledge and research about their interest in a particular destination at the hand of a concrete example – in our case, the example of Varaždin County. It is important to emphasize that our thesis employs the terms tourism on the continent, tourism in the continental part of the country and continental tourism as synonyms. Here, continental tourism in not taken as a synonym for agri- or rural tourism, but we mention them respectively as variants of tourism that can be “practiced” in continental parts of the country.