Visitor Management

There are many different types of visitors to protected areas. They may be official guests to a national park; researchers working in a strict nature reserve; volunteers assisting with a national park work program; educational groups learning about special natural or cultural heritage; or people who conduct their business within a protected area including contractors and shop owners. Importantly, visitors also include tourists and recreationists. In this chapter, we briefly examine the types of visitors protected area managers may need to deal with and management considerations associated with such visitor use. We, however, provide a focus on tourism and its management in this chapter. Depending on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) protected area category, tourism and recreation are common visitor uses of most protected areas and important contributors to local and national economies. As part of managing protected areas for tourists, we describe a management framework for providing a range of recreation opportunities within reserves, the provision of visitor services and facilities and management responses to visitor impacts.