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The carrying capacity of mountainous tourist areas: the case of plastira’s lake
Physical and Environmental dimension
Factors
- Extension of the reception area (per visitor)
- New structures (rate of construction)
- Water consumption (per visitor), Energy consumption (per visitor)
- Production of liquid wastes (per visitor)
- Production of solid wastes (per visitor)
- Extent of protected area (per visitor)
- Extent of archaeological area (per visitor)
- Extent of coastal area (per visitor)
- Extent of natural parks (per visitor)
- Length of hiking paths (per visitor)
- Ratio of fauna species that are endanger or in a regime of protection per number of visitors
or percentage variation of those fauna species and respectively of visitors’ number
These factors are possible to be altered depending on the features of the area in question.
There are significant limitations concerning the determination of the area capacity:
a) there is inability to determine the number of one-day excursionists from the
surrounding areas of the Lake Plastira and especially from the town of Karditsa,
b) there are no sufficient data as to whether the empty houses are used during the high
season as undeclared lodgings or as secondary residence or not used at all, and
c) there is inability to determine quality parameters.
Based on the above the limitations of the capacity of the study area are as follows:
Lodgings capacity: 565 beds
Ratio of local population to tourists: 1 local to 1,4 tourists (as dictated in relevant literature)
or 11068 tourists.
Therefore, Ceteris paribus, tourists that will visit the area can not exceed the number of 11,068
individuals per day of peak season.
If the need exceeds the above Carrying Capacity of lodgings we are against the construction
of new, but we propose the use of the already existent residences as tourist lodgings, in the
period where these are not using as second resident.
Tourism Today - Fall 2007 - Full Paper
117