Abstract
Increasing number of tourists wants to experience nature and at the same time have a positive impact on nature during their tourist stay. This paper presents the relationship between the preservation of natural capital of the locality and tourist season duration, as well as destination sustainable management and longevity. Tourism greatly depends on natural world, meaning the beauty of landscapes and seascapes and man's connection with nature itself. It simultaneously depends on local natural environment and exerts an impact thereon. Conservation and sustainable management of natural capital maybe achieved in various ways. Countries are attempting to preserve natural capital and to monitor its change through regular reporting, using selected indicators. Croatia should strive to preserve its unique natural resources and devise the tools to measure own performance with due consideration of its specific feature, all with the aim of ensuring sustainable all-year tourism. Finally, the paper considers comprehensively all pressures on natural environment exerted by tourism as well as benefits for the locality of preserving domestic natural capital in a long term, while ensuring the monitoring of changes in state thereof. A 'high value, low impact' approach would bring in the growing share of affluent nature-loving tourists throughout the year, thus reducing present tourism seasonality and highly negative impact on nature, local communities and microclimate change.
Highlights
Natural capital consists of living and nonliving environmental resources that are potentially available to generate value and constitute national richness, as it provides valuable goods and services to people such as clean air, clean water, food and recreation
Apart from ecosystem services [2], natural resources - their beauty and biodiversity – are crucial for tourism which is responsible for 20% of national GDP [3]
In spite of the fact that Croatia is among leading EU countries with regard to biodiversity, that invaluable resource is not sufficiently acknowledged, manifested and interwoven into nation's pride
Summary
Natural capital consists of living and nonliving environmental resources that are potentially available to generate value and constitute national richness, as it provides valuable goods and services to people such as clean air, clean water, food and recreation. Tourists have become much more physically and intellectually active, they look for new destinations and new tourism products, and want to visit places that are environmentally friendly and respect social justice. More and more tourists wish to participate in recreation, sports and adventure and to learn about culture history and the natural areas of the places visited, forms of adventure tourism are expanding rapidly as are other specialized forms of tourism including cultural, nature, ‘roots’, health and religious tourism. ‘events’, such as climate, volcanic or astrological incidents, the course of the year, evolution and the changes in the ecosystems are part of natural heritage Besides their importance as tourism attractions, each component of natural heritage may be a topic of educational and scientific interest. Appropriate approach to protection of natural attractions, in other words, promoting the preservation of attractions in the destination, may only increase the chances of securing more even distribution of higher number of tourist visits throughout the year
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