Abstract
National parks are highly valuable natural areas and have the potential to attract a large number of visitors. The number of visitors at national parks is systematically increasing, often exceeding Tourism Carrying Capacity (TCC) of trails. This situation requires adjusting the number of park visitors to adapt to sustainable management systems of visitor flow, thus preventing or counteracting overtourism. The aim of the study is to propose a comprehensive method for tourists monitoring in mid-mountain national park presented on the example of the Stołowe Mountains National Park (SMNP) in Poland, called as Monitoring System of tourist traffic (MSTT). The study describes six stages procedure of tourists Monitoring System creation and application as an optimal measurement technique. The MSTT enabled a multidimensional analysis of tourist traffic in SMNP. With the help of 39 pyroelectric sensors and surveys data spatio-temporal characteristic of visitor flow was obtained. The data generated in MSTT included hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and annual reports, taking into account the direction of traffic measuring both directions: entries (IN), exits (OUT) and passages (IN+OUT). The results from pyroelectric sensors were supplemented with field surveys, where visitor’s motivations, preferences, and behaviours were determined. In 2017 a total of 871,344 visitors were recorded in SMNP what causes one of the most popular national parks in Poland. The SMNP is a suitable destination for short breaks leisure visits in wilderness. In order to sustain MSTT methodology in the long-run the set of guidelines together with the workload estimates were presented. In the future, the MSTT can be further developed, including monitoring of climbing, cycling, cross-country skiing, car traffic and illegal tourism assessment. The MSTT can be considered as a useful tool for tourism management in mid-mountain national parks throughout the entire calendar year.
Highlights
National parks are highly valuable natural areas and they have the potential to attract a large number of visitors 1
The data obtained from the Monitoring System of tourist traffic (MSTT) allowed to produce a detailed description of tourist traffic in the studied national park as a whole (Table 1)
The results presented aim to highlight the potential of the MSTT and not to characterize the visitor flow in the Stołowe Mountains National Park (SMNP) per se
Summary
National parks are highly valuable natural areas and they have the potential to attract a large number of visitors 1. The main effect of these activities is an increase in number of visitors, which has exceeded capacity of trails in some national parks at this point. This issue of “overtourism” in national parks is the subject of study in many papers (Menzione 2018). This situation requires such a large number of visitors to adapt to sustainable management systems of visitor flow. It is important to assess the size, variability, and behaviour of visitors using an effective visitor monitoring systems in a national park
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