Abstract
The need for a closer and enhanced connection with nature, as the basis for human wellbeing, reinforces the importance of natural heritage governance, including wider and much improved access to information about nature-based tourism and recreation. This research seeks to reveal how Internet content can support the digital identification of nature sites and their branding as tourist destinations. To this end, it analyzes 20 exemplary websites, each known around the world, and highlights important current trends in the structuring and attractiveness of the information provided. Based on the devised benchmarking criteria, the study develops a benchmarking approach that improves digital “packaging” and marketing of natural heritage for the purposes of tourism, recreation, leisure, and sports, and then tests it in Bulgaria. The procedure includes the selection of 57 natural heritage sites and rating the content of their official websites. The results show an unsatisfactory level of representation of the heritage value of the Bulgarian NH and a severe depreciation of the provision of the necessary tourism and recreation information, in comparison to the selected global benchmark. Besides the outline of the most frequent gaps and shortcomings, the results provide managers with suggestions about the development of a “natural heritage” brand for tourism and recreation, which features amplification of site identity and messaging, plus enhancement of its visibility. The conclusions are applicable to a wide variety of geographical contexts and audiences in nature-based destination governance.
Highlights
The quality of the Digital Benchmarking Criteria System should be judged by its success to transform the largest possible number of first virtual encounters by potential visitors with the natural heritage site into real and repetitive visits
The typology of the Bulgarian natural heritage sites applied for the purpose of the study allows the following challenges to be identified, which require further research and analysis
This research proves the advantages of contemporary digital marketing techniques in the development of an Internet vision of natural heritage sites and their promotion as tourist destinations
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The booming digitization and virtualization trends, which have gained a momentous thrust during the COVID-19 pandemic, affect all aspects of human life with unprecedented speed and at a global scale. The ‘new normal’ requires a complete overhaul, and a restart, of health systems; more importantly, it requires a rethinking of human welfare, healthy lifestyles, and reconnection with nature as well as related recreation within open and nature-based tourism. The virtualization of Nature, through its digital representations, is becoming the main, if not the exclusive, information source fir the increasingly urbanized and tech-dependent global consumer
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