Managing tourism growth in endangered species' habitats of Africa: Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda

Ian Munanura, Kenneth Backman and Edwin Sabuhoro

Current Issues in Tourism, 2013, vol. 16, issue 7-8, 700-718

Abstract: Like other developing African countries, Rwanda has embraced nature-based tourism for its economic potential. However, tourism can cause irreversible harm, especially in fragile but popular tourist destinations such as Volcanoes National Park (VPN) in Rwanda, which is home to endangered species. Instead of focusing greater attention on this risk, park management has embarked on expanding tourism for greater revenue opportunities. Thus, this paper aims to explore tourism growth and potential resulting threats, investigate the capacity of tourism staff to manage the projected growth, and provide recommendations for management to develop tourism while considering its long-term effects. In addition to conducting interviews with senior park management, Appreciative Inquiry was utilised, which involves stages of grounding, discovery, and design to promote stakeholders' discussions on the future of tourism for VPN and GIS ArcView to map tourism use zones. The results highlight three main findings. First, tourism revenue-driven enthusiasm overshadows the park's fragility. Second, the proposed growth does not include an appropriate impact mitigation strategy. Third, human resources' skills for managing the planned tourism growth are limited. Consequently, the planned tourism growth could potentially destroy the park. Several recommendations (e.g. tourism use zoning plan) are made.

Date: 2013
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DOI: 10.1080/13683500.2013.785483

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