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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 Datesort
30 Think Tank IV Integration of Theory and Practice in Hospitality Sust... file 8594 Oct 13, 2013

This brief paper describes a new educational model developed at Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne (EHL) to link theory and practice, or more specifically, coordinate learning opportunities between the classroom (Sustainable Tourism) and current pr...

Author: James Holleran 

Year: 2004 

29 Think Tank V Tourism Education for Cambodia: A Case Study of its Fi... file 7030 Oct 13, 2013

This paper details the development, delivery and outcomes of a Masters course in Tourism Development that was delivered by the Royal University of Phnom Penh, with the assistance and support of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and t...

Author: Ravi Ravinder 

Year: 2005 

» Think Tank VI Ecotourism and Environmental Education: Opportunities ... file 152184 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 

27 Think Tank VI Service Learning in Tourism Educational Programs – A S... file 4228 Oct 13, 2013

A problem in developing new tourism markets remains how to resource them from an existing employment base. Key questions arising are: Do current tourism enterprises have the existing skills to move into these new markets for sustainable tour...

Author: Susan Anita Briggs 

Year: 2006 

26 Think Tank VII Innovation in Tourism Education: Building the Capacity... file 2139 Oct 13, 2013

This paper will present the findings of a recent Summit on the Future of Tourism Education held in April 2007 in Austria. The summit's goal is to identify future societal, economic, environmental, political and technological trends from 201...

Author: Pauline Sheldon 

Year: 2007 

25 Think Tank VII Barriers to Innovation in Hospitality Provision: Towar... file 9118 Oct 13, 2013

Recent challenges within the hospitality industry highlight a critical need for research and innovation to inform management practice. Surprisingly, however, a comprehensive review of literature has found that innovation research within the...

Author: Conrad Lashley & Barry O'Mahony 

Year: 2007 

24 Think Tank VII The New World of Travel 2.0: Application of Social Sof... file 7749 Oct 13, 2013

"Web 2.0" is a term used to refer to the emerging new wave of innovation on the Internet. Some see it as a second high-tech wave, marking the recovery from the technology and Internet "bust" at the end of the 1990s (O'Reilly 2005). Character...

Author: Alan A. Lew 

Year: 2007 

23 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 

22 Think Tank VIII Education’s Impact on Cultural Distance Perception: Th... file 3369 Oct 13, 2013

As an international tourism destination, Turkey serves mostly European tourist markets due to her closeness to European markets. Turkey and Europe has a long shared history of relationships. However, Turkey and Turkish people have a rather b...

Author: Yasin Boylu, Asli D. A. Tasci & William C. Gartner 

Year: 2008 

21 Think Tank VIII Environmental Education and Ecotourism: A Case Study o... file 8695 Oct 13, 2013

In this paper we take the standpoint that environmental education and ecotourism are highly related and depend on each other, and that ecotourism cannot be achieved without proper environmental education. Furthermore, in order to achieve qu...

Author: Mojca Arsenijevic & Marko Bohanec 

Year: 2008 

20 Think Tank IX The Role of Values in Sustainable Tourism Education file 4135 Oct 13, 2013

This presentation discusses the role of values in the context of sustainable tourism education. However, it does not seek to engage in the debate about the definition of Sustainable Tourism nor the differences between this concept and Sustai...

Author: Christian Schott 

Year: 2009 

19 Think Tank IX Cross-Cultural Interaction, Capacity Building and Sust... file 10672 Oct 13, 2013

This paper reports on findings which are part of a broader research conducted under the Learning and Teaching Fellowship Award 2007/08, aimed at the assessment of innovative blended learning techniques and applied learning in alternative st...

Author: Marina Novelli 

Year: 2009 

18 Think Tank IX Valuing Open Innovation Environments in Tourism Educat... file 5822 Oct 13, 2013

The world has changed tremendously since the publication of Our Common Future by the World Commission for Environment and Development (1987), which elevated the concept of sustainable development from grassroots initiatives to the forefront...

Author: Janne Liburd & Anne-Mette Hjalager 

Year: 2009 

17 Think Tank X Sustainable Tourism Pedagogy and Student Community Col... file 16673 Oct 13, 2013

There have been increasing calls to move away from the traditional disciplinary structures and research, teaching and learning approaches that have tended to ‘tunnel’ student learning and reinforce particular worldviews towards new forms of ...

Author: Tazim Jamal, Justin Taillon & Dianne Dredge 

Year: 2010 

16 Think Tank X Sustainability: What Matters to Students, Educators, a... file 5417 Oct 13, 2013

As climate change gains global attention from events like the summit in Copenhagen held during December of 2009, the need for sustainable tourism is more important than ever; with comprehensive education in sustainability concepts and practi...

Author: Cynthia S. Deale & Nelson Barber 

Year: 2010 

15 Think Tank XI Sustainable Tourism Labels: A Suitable Tool for Consum... file 3142 Oct 14, 2013

In an attempt to encourage businesses making an effort to reduce the negative impacts of tourism, and to maximise the positive outcomes of this activity an extensive number of sustainable tourism labels were developed worldwide. It has been...

Author: Sofia Reino 

Year: 2011 

14 Think Tank XI Sustainable Tourism Course Structure and Associated St... file 14367 Oct 14, 2013

The author has developed and delivered Sustainable Tourism (S.T.) related courses at Institutions of Higher Education in Paris, London, Helsinki, and Parnu, Estonia over the last 10 years. The focus of the presentation would be the S.T. con...

Author: James Holleran 

Year: 2011 

13 Think Tank XI Learning Network Sustainable Tourism (LNST) for Touris... file 5630 Oct 14, 2013

Since 2002 the Flemish Tourism Board, the executive agency of the Flemish Ministry of Tourism, has implemented different actions to introduce the principles of sustainable tourism into tourism education in Flanders. The general objective is...

Author: Griet Geudens & Manuel Minne 

Year: 2011 

12 Think Tank XI Identifying Critical Issues in Designing Educational T... file 3570 Oct 14, 2013

Education is seen as an important way to contribute to development. The World Bank finances educational projects with large amounts of money every year because it is convinced that improving education can help alleviate poverty by raising i...

Author: Kerstin Freudenthaler & Anja Hergesell 

Year: 2011 

11 Think Tank XI What Do Tourism Students Know About Sustainability and... file 12394 Oct 14, 2013

The topic of sustainable tourism education has only recently started to emerge in the tourism literature. A few tourism scholars have raised concerns about the need to prepare future tourism professionals for real life planning and manageme...

Author: Blanca A. Camargo & Ulrike Gretzel 

Year: 2011 

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