Visitor management in protected areas (original) (raw)
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VISITOR MANAGEMENT, A TOOL FOR SUSTAINABLE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT IN PROTECTED AREAS
The article analyzes visitor management techniques as a way to develop sustainable tourism in protected areas. Visitor management is an important tool in recreational and protected areas, as increasing use levels can negatively impact the quality of recreational experience as well as natural resources. To meet the requirements of both nature and visitors, a prudent and careful management is necessary. In order to manage protected areas within acceptable ecological and social carrying capacities, tourism planners need to monitor visitor numbers, leisure activities and behaviour and understand expectations and motivations.
Environmental Engineering and Management Journal
The protected natural areas are becoming increasingly popular vacation destinations with both international and domestic travellers. Protected area may be an area of land and/or sea dedicated to the protection and maintenance of biological diversity, and of natural and associated cultural resources, and managed through legal or other means. It might have many different purposes. This means that biodiversity protection, though a critically important function is far from being the only purpose and is often not the primary purpose of many protected areas. As an ever-growing activity, tourism in protected areas produces benefits and cost that often interact in complex ways. Therefore, it is obvious that special attention has to be paid to the protected areas governance model and its effectiveness, especially in terms of the planning and control process enhancement for the purpose of avoiding possible conflicts over nature protection and tourism development. This paper focuses on the analysis of problems that protected areas are facing in relation to tourism development, in particular from the Croatian protected areas' point of view (specifically, national parks and nature parks). Additionally it offers some recommendations concerning possible environmental management strategies, specifically those related to visitor management, whose tools ought to be implemented in order to keep both the protected areas' system and tourism development sustainable. These recommendations are to be discussed from the prospective of the new governance system implementation that might help in achieving the sustainability goals of Croatian protected areas.
IMPORTANCE OF VISITOR MANAGEMENT IN NATIONAL PARK PLANNING
With the increasing attention in the natural areas in recent years, especially the national parks have become focus of interest thanks to natural, cultural and historical resource values they embrace. These areas, which enable various forms of recreational and touristic activities, are under threat because of uncontrolled flow of visitors. Although they have been under protection through enacted laws, the continuous destruction on the resource values of the areas that lack visitor management plans is indispensable. The effects of recreational and touristic activities conducted especially in national parks can be biophysical, social and economic in nature. Therefore, visitor management is crucial in these areas for the sake of the continuity of sustainable utilisation. In the current study, the importance and effects of visitor management in the scale of the national parks of our country is stated, and suggestions are made in terms of relevant legislation. National parks, which constitute an important place among protected areas, serve as a source of information for ecology, geology, biology, medicine, chemistry and behavioural sciences. They especially play a key role in preservation of biological diversity. In our present day, unfortunately, damages and deteriorations caused by the utilisation of visitors are increasing in national parks, which have become the focus of interest for both domestic and foreign visitors along with the rise of alternative tourism trend. Soil compaction, loss of vegetation, extinction of wild life or being under threat of extinction, and impairment of the balance of water and food are some examples of the destruction taking place in national parks 1–8. National parks, which enable various types of recreational and tourism activities thanks to natural and cultural resource values they have, do contribute both to local and country economy by hosting a great number of visitors. However, uncontrolled visitor flow can cause irreparable damages on the resource values. Thus, environmental protection plays an importance role in sustainable development 9 , local and country economy.
Visitor Management for Ecotourism
Managing Sustainable Tourism Resources, 2018
Managing visitors and their activities in a destination is an indispensable function of destination management and marketing and the same is given more impetus to associate and ascertain impact studies for sustainable tourism development. Most ecotourism spots are environmentally fragile and need intensive attention and care by all stakeholders. This chapter is an attempt in a Tsunami-affected ecotourism site, Pichavaram, and surrounding in Tamil Nadu where the source of income was found in either agriculture or marine resource collections. The search for eco-tourists is a challenging task along with the activities for which they travel. Considering the review of literature for the same areas around the world, the detailed activities have been studied and all possible have been added for the survey. The findings of the study are a contribution to the visitor management strategy in this bio-geographic region.
Infrastructural elements in protected areas play an important role for visitors. They provide equipment to visitor activities and their demands. However data on infrastructure is frequently disregarded. Concepts and models to collect and deal with infrastructure data have to be developed. In Berchtesgaden National Park the concept of visitor nodes is used in order to support visitor management. Identification of 81 visitor nodes in this protected area took place. They have been classified into five categories: “place for excursions”, “destination for hiking”, “information”, “resting” and “orientation”. Each category is characterized through a defined standard supply. By using categories, evaluation of each visitor node was done. Deficits as well as satisfying situations became observably.
Trends Affecting Tourism in Protected Areas
This paper discusses 16 important trends that are predicted to affect the planning and management of parks and protected areas in the medium term. While there are many trends visible, the ones chosen are mostly likely to require a management response. There are both challenges and opportunities for tourism-related benefits in parks and protected areas.
Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2002
Ecotourism and protected area visitation in Central and South America have resultedin ecological impacts, which some protected areas managers have addressed by employing visitor impact management frameworks. In this paper, we propose the Protected Area Visitor Impact Management (PAVIM) framework as an alternative to carrying capacity and other frameworks such as Limits of Acceptable Change. We use a set of evaluation criteria to compare the relative positive and negative attributes of carrying capacity, other decision-making frameworks and the new framework, within the context of their actual and potential use in Central and South America. Positive attributes of PAVIM include simplicity, flexibility, cost effectiveness, timeliness and incorporating input from stakeholders and local residents. Negative attributes include diminished objectivity and cultural sensitivity issues. Further research and application of PAVIM are recommended.