Preserving Wilderness at an Emerging Tourist Destination

Anna Dóra Sæþórsdóttir

doi:10.5539/jms.v4n3p65

Abstract

Iceland is an emerging tourist destination with a huge growth in tourist arrivals where wilderness as an important part of the attraction.But visitors travel into wilderness to experience naturalness and solitude so when wilderness becomes a popular tourist destination these qualities are difficult to preserve. This research builds on questionnaire surveys gathered among 3941 travelers at nine areas in the Highlands of Iceland where the aim was to explore to what extent travelers experience wilderness in the Highlands of Iceland and whether they experience that the carrying capacity of the destinations in the Highlands has been reached. It furthermore discusses the possible use limits of wilderness as an arena for tourism.The results show that despite substantial human influence travelers experience wilderness. Most travelers consider the number of tourists appropriate, although some warning signs are emerging as 40% of tourists consider that there are too many tourists in one of the areas. Visitors prefer simplicity and wish to keep the places as natural as possible, with one exception at the most visited destination. There the attitudes of visitors are more anthropocentric, favoring more humanized landscape and service. Using wilderness as a tourism product is a very challenging task in an emerging destination where tourism growth is as fast as it is in Iceland.

Highlights

Iceland is an emerging tourist destination in the North Atlantic with nature and wilderness as the main attraction
Iceland is an emerging tourist destination with a huge growth in tourist arrivals where wilderness as an important part of the attraction.But visitors travel into wilderness to experience naturalness and solitude so when wilderness becomes a popular tourist destination these qualities are difficult to preserve
This research builds on questionnaire surveys gathered among 3941 travelers at nine areas in the Highlands of Iceland where the aim was to explore to what extent travelers experience wilderness in the Highlands of Iceland and whether they experience that the carrying capacity of the destinations in the Highlands has been reached

Summary

Introduction

Iceland is an emerging tourist destination in the North Atlantic with nature and wilderness as the main attraction. The annual growth has been strong in the last three years, or about 17% (Icelandic Tourist Board, 2014). This is high, especially if compared with 5% growth in tourist arrivals in Europe and worldwide in 2013 (UNWTO, 2014). The Highlands are very popular among travelers as more than one third of foreign summer tourists visit the area (Icelandic Tourist Board, 2012). This makes the Highlands very important for nature-based and wilderness tourism. The very fast growth of tourism raises concerns regarding the difficulties of preserving the wilderness there, maintaining the qualities of the resource and the experiences of visitors. For management purposes it is necessary to know and follow these changes as a common resource can only be protected from overuse with management and control (Butler, 2010)

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