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The carrying capacity of mountainous tourist areas: the case of plastira’s lake
of an area, the carrying capacity can be useful as a "guide", assisting in the evaluation and
the control of the maximum acceptable level of tourism development. However the application
of a limit, in practice, faces difficulties. As a result the related implementations are very
limited at the level of tourism planning. The first implementations have been developed for
the management of recreation in national parks (Fisher and Krutila, 1972). On the other hand
efforts have been made to evaluate the usefulness of tourist resorts, cities (Borg, 1991) and
islands (Coccosis, 2000).
In a protected marine area the evaluation of carrying capacity is a relatively easy process
(MPA, 2004). The carrying capacity can differ from area to area and it depends on the habitat
and can increase or decrease, depending on the level of experience and education of the
visitors. According to the Environmental program directive of United Nations the basic
equation for the estimation of carrying capacity is the following:
Carrying capacity = Area used by tourists / Medium individual extent
Medium individual extent (m 2 / individual) is the extent that is required for an acceptable
level of recreation in the protected area, which can vary depending on the area, the activity
and existing management (MPA, 2004).
Very often for the estimation of carrying capacity we use the case study methodology, which
includes various techniques such as, observation and interview. The interviews are received
by tourist experts, governmental cadres, as well as by other public and private institutions
(Simon et al., 2004). We can estimate the carrying capacity of coasts by measuring their level
of use and the pollution of the sea. The increase of tourism in a beach is a desirable phenomenon
for the economies of most countries. However the large number of visitors in the beaches
includes the danger of degradation and the pollution of the wider marine area (Kocasoy, 1989).
Most types of carrying capacity are based on the American experience and have relation with
the intensive use of land and aquatic recreation areas and are presented in table 1 (Sidaway,
1974). Usually, they are expressed in number of individuals per surface unit of the resource
of recreation, e.g. per hectare of forest, forest extent, park, coast, agricultural land, also in
number of individuals in the unit of length, e.g. per kilometre of path or coast line and in
number of units of facility (scenes, tables) per unit of surface (Trakolis, 2003). A lot of efforts
have been made for the creation of «transformation factors» that represents the extent of
natural resource of recreation that is required per visitor and day. The «transformation factors»
help the administrators of extents of recreation to maintain the quality of recreation in a given
level.
Tourism Today - Fall 2007 - Full Paper
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