Mapping Potential for Tourist Segments

Abstract

Nature-based tourism is an increasingly popular activity within the tourism industry in Australia. The economic value of nature-based tourism was estimated to be $850 million in 1995. Of the 3.4 million international visitors to Australia, approximately 50% visited at least one national park during their stay. This paper will discuss an approach to mapping tourism potential throughout nature-based tourism destinations. These maps are outputs from a tourism potential model. The model has been founded on principles of environmental sustainability, that is minimizing environmental degradation, as well as maximizing tourist appeal by identifying tourism attractiveness, diversity and spatial distribution of these attractions within a nature-based tourism destination. it is anticipated that through these resultant maps, park and natural resource managers, as well as tourism operators, are able to offer enhanced nature-based tourism products that target different tourist market segments. It is also envisaged that using the model, new opportunities can be determined that will enable increasing numbers of tourists to visit particular nature-based tourism destinations without actively degrading the environment for which the tourists are coming to see, and without degrading the tourist experience through effectively redistributing social carrying capacities.