Introducing Geotourism to Diversify the Visitor Experience in Protected Areas and Reduce Impacts on Overused Attractions

Daminda Sumanapala () and Isabelle D. Wolf
Additional contact information
Daminda Sumanapala: Tourism Research Cluster, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6150, Australia
Isabelle D. Wolf: Australian Centre for Culture, Environment, Society and Space, School of Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 12, 1-15

Abstract: Sri Lankan National Parks are highly popular among international and local visitors, as they offer close-up encounters with large animal species. Yala National Park is one of the top five parks in the country attracting larger crowds than any other parks especially during the holiday season. Most visitors flock to the park to observe the highly sought-after Asian Elephant and Asian Leopard. This has led to safari operators pursuing these animals aggressively to satisfy visitor expectations, thereby threatening wildlife populations. In this article, we present a straightforward methodology to identify high-potential geotourism sites in order to diversify visitor experiences as a means to alleviate pressure from wildlife tourism. To identify sites, firstly this study has evaluated various place characteristics important for the development of geotourism, including scientific, tourism and ‘additional’ value indicators. As a result, three sites out of four were selected to promote geotourism in Yala National Park. Secondly, a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis was performed, which builds on the results from the numerical evaluation but provides a more in-depth narrative assessment. Ultimately, this study serves as an example of how to seize the opportunities that geotourism offers for diversifying tourism offers in protected areas.

Keywords: geotourism; wildlife tourism; visitor impacts; diversification; protected area (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/12/2118/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/12/2118/ (text/html)

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:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:12:p:2118-:d:982857

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().