Redefining sustainable tourism challenges and associated indicators in protected and conserved areas

Abstract

The sustainable coexistence of tourism and conservation is of the utmost global importance, especially from the perspective of economic development, local community wellbeing, and environmental needs. Therefore, it is necessary to adapt tourism sustainability indicators to specific situations in different protected areas (PA). In the process of developing a synthetic indicator, there is always a balance to be struck between ease/cost of measurement and policy significance (Latinopoulos, Vagiona, 2014), and this process is even more complex in terms of the sensitivity of elements of ecosystems and geosystems which must be taken into account when managing PA. Indicators focusing on tourism in protected areas are often created based on existing sets of indicators, such as European Tourism Indicators System (ETIS), which are just partly suitable for application in such environments, and it must be added that it has been proved that the European Commission had unrealistic expectations that a transformation in policies could occur as a result of the use of indicators. Furthermore, lists of indicators in PAs often take into account the visitor perception as the most important criterion in PAs, which, although important, should not be the primary element of monitoring, being based instead on the attitudes of the local population and the knowledge of management specialists. This chapter will partially use Manning’s framework for managing outdoor recreation and tourism in parks and protected areas (2010), with a focus on formulating indicators of sustainable tourism that can be relatively easily correlated with environmental indicators. The redefined indicators will be based on focus groups and interviews with experts in the field of tourism, indicator development and nature protection.