Technical Proficiencies for Managing Tourism and Visitors in Protected Areas

Tourism has become one of the tools that many academics, activists, NGOs and governments see as providing income needed to fund management of protected areas. There is no question that for the vast majority of the over 112,000 national designated protected areas in the world, adequate funds for careful, sensitive and insightful stewardship are lacking. Tourism, and the economic activity it generates, can be an effective source of funds, generated through taxes, concession licenses, entrance and user fees, and cooperative agreements can provide for many of these protected areas additional funding.

But of course, tourism is one of those classical two edged swords, providing distinct and valuable benefits on one hand, but also serving as a potential threat to the values preserved in a park on the other. Exploiting potential benefits from tourism requires opportunities be carefully crafted, understanding markets and visitors preferences and seeing tourism development as part of a larger system. Responding to threats from tourism and visitors requires an equally sensitive and competent workforce, appropriate legal foundations and meticulously constructed public engagement.

In both cases, the technical and social proficiency of the stewardship agency are critical to successful stewardship. But what proficiencies are needed?

This question was addressed in a 2008 workshop sponsored by the U.S. National Park Service and The University of Montana College of Forestry and Conservation. The workshop brought together about two dozen managers and academics from all over the world to discuss alternative models of visitor management. Rather than proposing one particular model to manage visitors and tourism, the workshop explored the ways different parks—from the Galapagos to Yellowstone, from Chaco Canyon to Jiuzhaigou—handled large numbers of visitors to not only reduce impacts but to improve the quality of experience.

The workshop also asked participants, through several small and large group processes, about the skills needed. A large variety of skills and proficiencies were identified, everything from understanding and doing park tourism marketing to facilitating meetings to monitoring the impacts of tourism and visitors. After identifying this large array of skills, participants ranked them on the “most important”. Below is the list of technical proficiencies ranked highest in importance.

Obviously, not all skills can be found in any given staff person, and not all parks will need all these skills on site. And, the skills as listed here are only brief statements, but the workshop report provides a detailed description of what workshop participants felt were key characteristics of each proficiency. What is really important here is constructing mechanisms so that protected area staff have access to these proficiencies, through regional and central staff, NGOs or consulting services. And what is also important is that protected area staff understand when these skills are needed to address a particular tourism opportunity or challenge.

If you would like a copy of the report, I would be happy to email it to you.