Linking Culture and the Environment

C.P. Dawson 43
With these proposed definitions of ecotourism and nature-based tourism
(Table 3.1), the tourism opportunity types can be labelled and a continuum of
tourism development levels that extend up to a highly developed urban setting
can be outlined. The ROS offers an approach to formulating a parallel
TOS as proposed by Butler and Waldbrook (1991) and Robertson et al. (1995)
and now reported in textbooks on recreation and tourism planning and management
(e.g. Pigram and Jenkins, 2006). The concept uses characteristics of
the setting and the opportunities provided to users to classify the tourism
planning area into a position on the continuum.
Recreation Opportunity Spectrum
The ROS has been used by the US Forest Service and the Bureau of Land
Management since the 1970s (Clark and Stankey, 1979; Driver et al., 1987;
Nilsen and Tayler, 1997). The guiding ROS concept was to develop a rational
and comprehensive planning approach for regional planning and management
that provided for a broad array of recreational opportunities for users.
The ROS has been widely recognized as an important recreation planning
framework (McCool et al., 2007) and has been adapted into other parallel
frameworks such as the Water Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (Haas
et al., 2004).
The ROS defined four to six setting categories of land-use management
from primitive to urban to help managers better understand physical, biological,
social and managerial relationships. The ROS planning product
defined the user opportunities for several classes of recreational experience
within each setting category. The ROS used several indicators of the recreation
setting (e.g. the number of social encounters on trails, ease of access) to
monitor the outcomes of the management implementation. The planning
products from the ROS process specified the guidelines for managers and the
indicators and standards for monitoring results.
The planning premises in the ROS process require that the four to six setting
categories of land-use management (i.e. opportunities for experiences)
from primitive to urban be defined and agreed upon prior to starting the
planning process. Subsequently, a further subdivision is outlined of several
opportunity classes within each setting category. Then setting and experience
indicators are conceptually identified, qualitatively and quantitatively
defined, and specific standards developed for monitoring and management
decision making over time.
The ROS is a regional planning process that is adapted here to tourism
because of concern about growing tourism demand and limited resource
supply, especially related to ecotourism and nature-based tourism. The
planned and incremental growth of tourism generally continues through
various developmental stages from undeveloped rural areas to human-built
urban environments (Murphy, 1985; Mathieson and Wall, 1987; Gunn, 1994).
The TOS can help to describe this continuum, and by so doing help identify
consequences of development and preserve ever-scarcer opportunities for