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RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Aphirom Promchanya
School/Work Place : University of Perpignan, France
Contact : tongleave@yahoo.com
Year : 2006

Ecotourism, which typically involves nature-based tourism, plays an increasing role in today's environmental management. As environmental conservation has, in many cases, suffered from a limited budget, funding ecotourism is perceived as a way to provide additional resources to finance environmental conservation efforts. In some cases, revenue generated from ecotourism can be substantial and can be used to provide alternative employment/income to local residents. This alternative employment also helps to reduce the pressure on encroachment and environmental destruction by the local people. Ecotourism is, thus, seen here as a vehicle for sustainable development.

As ecotourism involves human interaction with nature, it inevitably asserts a pressure on the environment. Overcrowding, waste and littering, pollution or commercialization resulting from ecotourism can also accelerate environment destruction. For this reason, there is a need to carefully promote ecotourism so that it will not become an additional threat to the environment. For ecotourism to benefit society but not damage natural heritage, it has to recognize the carrying capacity of the environment and not expand beyond that threshold.

Controlling ecotourism within the limit of the carrying capacity of the environment can be accomplished via sound management techniques (park management) or the use of economic instruments such as user charges (or entrance fees), various kinds of taxes, and imposing a limit on the number of visitors or tradable permits. These economic instruments aim to control ecotour activities so that the marginal benefit (revenue) equals the marginal social and private cost (environmental damage plus opportunity cost of all inputs) and, hence, maximize the net social welfare to society.

In a recent literature review found that only relaxation exceeded learning in importance as a motivator for many leisure activities. They found that from analysis of a number of studies, considerable gains occurred in factual knowledge, recognition memory, and behavior of skills during leisure participation. However, evidence of attitude change was less compelling. The opportunity to learn, whether that learning be cognitive, affective or motor skills development has been an implicit value of travel and tourism. They further agree that what they call the big issues of learning, such as environmental sensitivity and stewardship, pride and commitment to a nation’s heritage, have not been addressed in the context of leisure.

Tourists’ opportunities to learn during their travels are many, though it could be argued that the quality of these learning opportunities varies considerably. Tourists to natural areas (national parks and similar reserves) have long been offered a range of environmental and cultural interpretive opportunities, ranging from interpretive signs, brochures, booklets and other printed material, and personal experiences with rangers and other interpretive guides. Defined interpretation as an educational activity which aims to reveal meanings and relationships through the use of original objectives, by firsthand experience and by illustrative media, rather than simply to communicate factual information

Interpretation can be though of, then, as a form of non-formal environmental education carried out in a largely recreational setting, in which the visiting population is provided with opportunities to become more aware of particular concepts and phenomena by firsthand experience. Environmental education differs from interpretation in that it is a more formal approach to learning, has a more rigorous structure, and presents information more in the form of information to be learned.

Ecotourism and Environmental Education in Thailand recommended the following key goals of environmental education:

  • To foster clear awareness of, and concern about, economic, social, political and ecological interdependence in urban and rural areas;
  • To provide every person with opportunities to acquire the knowledge, values, attitudes, commitment and skills needed to protect and improve the environment;
  • To create new patterns of behaviour of individuals, groups and society as a whole towards the environment.

List of Articles
No. Subject Views Date
26 Think Tank X How Is Sustainability ‘Materialised’ in Tourism? Conte... file 1764 Oct 13, 2013

Meaning is one of the most elusive and ubiquitous properties of tourism spaces. This paper analyses the ambiguity of meaning in the materiality of tourism sustainability. Sustainable development and its three interrelated principles of holi...

Author: Neil M. Walsh 

Year: 2010 

25 Think Tank IX The West in the East: Conflict in the Values of Volunt... file 4417 Oct 13, 2013

Consequently, the aim of this research was to explore the complexity of trying to work within a framework of sustainability, with a given number of stakeholders (in this case, a UK organisation, its customers (volunteers, primarily British) ...

Author: Angela M. Benson 

Year: 2009 

24 Think Tank IX The elusiveness of sustainability in tourism: The cult... file 6281 Oct 13, 2013

Sustainable tourism is perhaps the most prominent feature of contemporary tourism discourse. However, despite its prominence for several decades, achieving sustainability remains as elusive as ever. This paper explores the concept of the cu...

Author: Freya Higgins-Desbiolles 

Year: 2009 

23 Think Tank IX Achieving Sustainability in Business Events; Challengi... file 3654 Oct 13, 2013

Achieving sustainability is a challenge for all of society, but one that may prove especially problematic for the business events sector. Tourism in general and the business events industry in particular may be even more susceptible than oth...

Author: Judith Mair & Leo Jago 

Year: 2009 

22 Think Tank IX Courchevel, an outstanding alpine ski resort at a turn... file 8055 Oct 13, 2013

“Courchevel is first and foremost one among the founding elements of the huge touristic complex of les Trois Vallées in France. Linked to the neighbouring Allues and Belleville valleys by a 3,000 acres network area of regularly packed and ma...

Author: Daniel Tixier 

Year: 2009 

21 Think Tank VIII Moving from Destination Marketing to Destination Manag... file 70601 Oct 13, 2013

This paper provides a case study of how a tourism organisation has interpreted the change from a ‘marketing’ to a ‘management’ approach in destination development. It begins by looking at what the literature has said about destination manag...

Author: David Foster 

Year: 2008 

20 Think Tank VIII Tourism-led Amenity Migration and the Transformation o... file 3321 Oct 13, 2013

Global economic and political change has stimulated an explosion in tourism-led migration flows resulting in unprecedented transformation in the form and condition of impacted communities (Woods, 2006). This increase in human migration to ar...

Author: Alison M. Gill 

Year: 2008 

19 Think Tank VIII A Tool for Improving the Sustainability of Tourism Ind... file 2809 Oct 13, 2013

The tourism industry’s interest in sustainable management has increased in exponential proportions over the past year. Substantial amounts of space in industry journals are devoted to issues such as sustainability, energy management, green b...

Author: Claudia Jurowski 

Year: 2008 

18 Think Tank VIII Integrating Sustainability into Tourism Education and ... file 4802 Oct 13, 2013

The focus of this paper is to provide an overview of the current sustainability content in Irish tourism programmes and the identification of key trends in this regard. It is based on extensive research of secondary and tertiary education s...

Author: Jane Stacey, Sheila Flanagan, Kevin Griffin & Anna Tottle 

Year: 2008 

17 Think Tank VIII Will the Advent of a More Responsible Type of Tourism ... file 2942 Oct 13, 2013

‘Responsible’ tourism is all the rage nowadays. Parallel to the offer commercialized by specialized tour operators on the sustainable niche, traditional tour-operators have also begun to claim the sustainability of their offer. One can henc...

Author: Maud Tixier 

Year: 2008 

16 Think Tank VII Tourist Perceptions of Environmentally Friendly Innova... file 24557 Oct 13, 2013

As the environmental movement got underway and environmental awareness came into focus in the late 20th century, the tourism industry began incorporating 'environmentally friendly' efforts into their business practices. Requests for towel r...

Author: Kathleen L. Andereck 

Year: 2007 

15 Think Tank VII Environmentally Sustainable Practices of Victorian Tou... file 7965 Oct 13, 2013

Environmental sustainability has been a growing concern in our society for the past twenty years, and is a primary issue of many leaders of the tourism industry. In spite of the many efforts to encourage and/or enforce environmentally sound ...

Author: Sue Beeton, Sue Bergin-Seers & Christine Lee 

Year: 2007 

14 Think Tank VII A Community of Heroes file 2873 Oct 13, 2013

Sense of place is the human response to natural and built surroundings, geography, history and population. Over time, that response evolves into a shared consciousness, woven by memory, story and experience. Distinct from written history, th...

Author: Regina Binder 

Year: 2007 

13 Think Tank VII Branding Sustainability: Taking 'The Natural Step' in ... file 63447 Oct 13, 2013

Translation of the concept of sustainability into practice is fraught with problems. While policy advances in all sectors of the economy have made steps in the right direction the lack of clarity in defining what is meant by 'sustainability...

Author: Alison Gill & Peter Williams 

Year: 2007 

12 Think Tank VII Volunteer Tourism: Sustainable Innovation in Tourism, ... file 6074 Oct 13, 2013

This is a study of the relationships between two volunteer tourism host communities and the volunteer tourists who visit them. One is a declining rural community located in the Appalachian mountains of the United States. The other is in a ra...

Author: Nancy McGehee 

Year: 2007 

11 Think Tank VII Practical Interpretations of a Dynamic Model of Sustai... file 5647 Oct 13, 2013

"Operational definitions of tourism sustainability require details regarding what is to be sustained, for whom it is to be sustained, and the level at which it is to be sustained." This is the introductory sentence to "A Dynamic Model of Sus...

Author: Timothy Tyrrell & Robert Johnston 

Year: 2007 

10 Think Tank VI Authenticity in Cultural Heritage Tourism as a means t... file 4588 Oct 13, 2013

This work aims through a clarification of philosophical assumptions to define authenticity in a dialogical perspective on the premise that there is a linkage between authenticity and sustainability. This paper will to discuss the development...

Author: Bente Bramming 

Year: 2006 

» Think Tank VI Ecotourism and Environmental Education: Opportunities ... file 152160 Oct 13, 2013

Ecotourism, which typically involves nature-based tourism, plays an increasing role in today's environmental management. As environmental conservation has, in many cases, suffered from a limited budget, funding ecotourism is perceived as a w...

Author: Aphirom Promchanya 

Year: 2006 

8 Think Tank V Managing of Public Risks in Tourism: Towards Sustainab... file 4176 Oct 13, 2013

How to manage risks that endanger development of tourism but that are caused by tourism itself? An industry-based model is presented as an analytic tool and adapted to the situation in tourism. It is argued that development of tourism lacks ...

Author: Yoram Krozer & Else Redzepovic 

Year: 2005 

7 Think Tank IV Evaluation of Tourism Events: A Critical Review with a... file 2290 Oct 13, 2013

This presentation will critically review the three main sources of error in tourism event evaluation, related to the limited temporal, geographic and economic scope of current event evaluation approaches. In doing so, it will draw the attent...

Author: Jack Carlsen 

Year: 2004 

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