Putting tourists in harms way – Coastal tourist parks and hazardous unpatrolled surf beaches in New South Wales, Australia

Campbell McKay, Robert W. Brander and James Goff

Tourism Management, 2014, vol. 45, issue C, 71-84

Abstract: This study investigates relationships between coastal tourist parks in New South Wales (NSW), Australia and the hazard rating and extent of lifeguard patrols of their nearest surf beach. The vast majority (91%) of NSW coastal tourist parks are closest to surf beaches rated as hazardous to swimmers. Of these beaches, 35% are completely unpatrolled by lifeguards while another 61% are only partially patrolled (<25% per year). Visitors to tourist parks in the Southern Region of NSW are at greater risk when bathing due to a higher percentage of unpatrolled beaches. These findings raise important questions regarding the provision of lifeguarding services on these beaches, the availability and dissemination of beach safety material, and the duty of care of tourist park operators. It also highlights the need to further incorporate human usage and interaction variables into existing beach hazard rating systems.

Keywords: Tourist parks; Beach safety; Unpatrolled beaches; Beach hazard rating; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517714000624

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:touman:v:45:y:2014:i:c:p:71-84

DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2014.03.007

Access Statistics for this article

Tourism Management is currently edited by Chris Ryan

More articles in Tourism Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().