ACTA SZEKSZARDIENSIUM - Pécsi Tudományegyetem Illyés Gyula ...

Zoltán Raffay
activity to the beneficiaries. They may be impacts that are specific to the given
activity; others are longer term effects that concern the larger population (global
effects);
● Output indicators complement impact indicators and are linked to results. They
monitor the immediate products and services delivered to beneficiaries and can
be used to justify short-term resource allocation decisions. They usually measure
physical or financial units (length of roads built in kilometres, number of commercial
accommodations created, number of firms receiving financial support from a
programme, number of employees participating in trainings etc.);
● Performance indicators are linked to activities. To increase ownership of the process,
key stakeholders (like ecotourism service providers and communities) should be
involved in the setting of targets. They demonstrate the direct and immediate
impacts generated by a programme. These indicators may be of physical character
as well (growth of the number of visitors to e tourism destination, number of
people successfully finishing a course, increase in the number of guest nights
etc.) or of financial nature (investments induced in the private sector, reduced
operational costs of hotels etc.).
Indicators should be set according to the SMART criteria: they should be Specific to
the objective; Measurable either quantitatively or qualitatively; Available at an acceptable
cost 3 ; Relevant to the information needs of decision-makers; and Time-bound so that
users know when to expect the objective or target to be achieved.
3.2. The use of ecotourism indicators in Hungary
There is a large number of (baseline, output, performance and impact) indicators for
the measurement of the socio-cultural and the economic impacts of tourism, but the
measurement of the ecological impacts is in infancy for the time being in Hungary. This
is true despite the fact that ecotourism is an activity of growing popularity in several
Hungarian tourism regions and it is more and more typical for the protected areas,
including the national parks of Hungary, to build visitors centres and educational paths
and organise ecotourism activities in order to receive a growing number of tourists and
thereby improving their economic situation and decrease their dependence on the state
supports.
The lack of ecotourism indicators is mentioned in the highest level tourism development
document of Hungary, the Hungarian National Tourism Development Strategy. There are
initiatives in the area of sustainable tourism but we lack a system of indicators that allows
us to tell if a development, a service provider or a destination works in line with the
principles of sustainability or not. Of the nine tourism regions of Hungary, the latest
tourism development strategies do not contain any indicator for the measurement of the
3 Another possible word for ‘A’ is Achievable, i.e. realistic.
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