Clusters in tourism, agriculture and food processing within the Visegrad Group

The contemporary regional economics sees clusters as geographically close groups of companies and other connecting organizations that work together while they also mutually compete. Despite the fact that the naturally born clusters exist for centuries and their formation is driven primarily by market factors, there has been prevailing in the recent decades a positive view of the controlled and driven development of clusters in developed countries. Organized clusters are being called the cluster initiative. In recent years, there was a relatively rapid development of cluster initiatives also in the territory of the Visegrad countries due to the national programs and subsidies from the EU structural funds. This paper reacts to the situation. The aim of the paper is to identify clusters currently existing in the tourism, agriculture and food sector in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia and to analyze their regional dispersion, structure and activities.