Carrying capacities for visitor management - DANUBEPARKS

Carrying capacity is used in the context of sustainable tourism. It is often proposedas a method to evaluate the intensity of tourist development a tourist destination cansupport taken into account the ecological, economical and social characteristics ofthat destination.In literature that deals with this topic, an interesting definition was found:The maximum amount of visitors that can be at the same time in the tourist destination withoutcausing negative effects on the physical, economical and socio-cultural values of society/communityand without causing a (considerable) decrease in visitors’ satisfaction.In protected areas management the simple question ‘how much is too much?’ isnot an easy one to answer.Because of the complexity of policy and management, carrying capacity has toevolve from a single concept (a limit to the maximum number of visitors that onecan receive) to an information system/a monitoring system that helps in decisionmaking.