Visitor monitoring along roads and hiking trails: How to determine usage levels in tourist sites

Isabelle D. Wolf, Gerald Hagenloh and David B. Croft

Tourism Management, 2012, vol. 33, issue 1, 16-28

Abstract: Best-practice visitor-monitoring techniques are crucial for the assessment of tourism-related impacts in natural areas of high conservation value. In such studies, ecosystem variables are typically compared between high and low usage tourist sites. We assessed visitor use at 80 sites in the Flinders Ranges gorges and compared 11 visitor variables for their potential to differentiate usage levels between sites either exposed to vehicle or hiker traffic. We show that the efficiency with which a visitor variable represents usage levels depends on the access mode to gorges, with the number of passing visitors best suited for monitoring of usage levels in gorges permitting hiker access only, and variables describing camping usage best suited for gorges permitting vehicle access.

Keywords: Visitor monitoring; GPS tracking; Visitor survey; Usage intensity; Visitor impacts (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:touman:v:33:y:2012:i:1:p:16-28

DOI: 10.1016/j.tourman.2011.01.019

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