PDF: Managing for Visitor Experiences in Protected Areas: Promising opportunities and fundamental challenges

Citation
McCool, S. F. 2006. Managing for visitor experiences in protected areas: Promising opportunities and fundamental challenges. Parks, 16(2), 3-9.

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Summary Rapidly increasing international and domestic travel provides both opportunities and challenges for managers of the globe’s over 100,000 protected areas. Tourism can be a force for conservation, but underlying a successful tourism strategy is the provision of opportunities for high quality visitor experiences. Providing these opportunities requires an understanding of how visitors construct experiences, provision of appropriate supporting facilities and management programmes, protection of key natural and cultural heritage values, co-operation with the private sector and key monitoring activities. There are several challenges as well, including linking setting attributes with experiences, understanding the interests of managers, visitors, tour operators and communities, and mapping and measuring what experiences visitors desire