OMSLAG 5.indd - IUCN

3. 3
Visitor management
techniques
Management of protected areas is often directed at dealing with visitors:
minimising their impact and providing information. Managing visitors
is much more than that: it includes local and regional economic, cultural
and social elements. Visitor management has three main characteristics:
protecting and enhancing the resources, helping visitors to enjoy their
visit, and maintaining and improving the economic benefits of tourism.
It also means matching the activities in the area to the expectations of
the target group. Visitor-oriented developments are more likely to lead to
visitor satisfaction, but they require insight in visitor behaviour and tourism
trends. Changing trends can be anticipated by analysing recreational trends
outside the park boundaries. In this way problems and opportunities can be
detected in an early stage, but the approach requires a pro-active instead of
a reactive attitude.
Over the past decades, many different measures to achieve conservation as
well as visitor satisfaction have been attempted. In the following section we
will discuss some of these visitor management tools.
How many 3. is too many?
3.1
A term that is often used in visitor management is the carrying capacity of
a natural area. In theory, it is possible to define how many people can visit
the area without disturbing the ecological balance. But impact monitoring
showed that ecological, social, physical and experiential analysis were
not enough. The season, the type of visitors and their behaviour, and the
length of the recovery periods between the periods of use also had a large
influence on the degree of impact. ‘How many is too many?’ proved to be a
much too simple question to measure this factor. Nowadays, the questions
are: ‘What is the desired situation?’, ‘To what extent do we accept change?’,
and ‘How can this situation be achieved?’
Management frameworks provide the initiators of tourism and
conservation projects with the theoretical background needed for practical
measures in the field. The pros and cons of frameworks like Limits of
Acceptable Change, Visitor Experience and Resource Protection and
Tourism Optimization Model are comprehensively discussed in the IUCN
publication Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas.
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There are various techniques that can be used to influence the use of
an area. Some projects charge an entrance or visitor fee to regulate the
number of visitors. The tour operators that work together with YK-RASI,
the dolphin project in Kalimantan, are intending to charge higher fees for
their excursions as soon as they are tipped by YK-RASI that their boat
trips are influencing the dolphins’ behaviour. Other examples of mitigating
measures are to try to attract visitors outside the peak periods or to protect
the natural area by building boardwalks. An overview of possible measures
is given in figure 4.
Figure 4. Visitor Management Techniques
3. 3.2
Visitor Management Techniques
(Sustainable Tourism in Protected Areas, by IUCN WCPA):
1. Reduce use of the entire protected area
2. Reduce use of problem areas
3. Modify the location of use within problem areas
4. Modify the timing of use
5. Modify the type of use and visitor behaviour
6. Modify visitor expectations
7. Increase the resistance of the resource
8. Maintain/rehabilitate the resource
Zoning
Zoning of activities is a practical measure used by many project initiators.
The term ‘zoning’ means allocating specific areas for specific levels and
intensities of human activities and conservation. The natural and cultural
qualities of the area are protected while some use is allowed. Besides
protecting habitats, ecosystems and ecological processes, damaging human
activities can be separated from the protected area.
Zoning objectives:
• Protection of habitats, ecosystems and ecological processes;
• Separating conflicting human activities;
• Protection of natural and/or cultural qualities, while allowing some human use;
• Reserving zones for particular human uses, while minimizing the effects of
those uses on the area;
• Preserving some zones in their natural state undisturbed by humans except
for the purposes of scientific research or education.
Figure 5. Zoning objetives (IUCN MPA, Paul Eagles)