Outcome-focused national park experience management: transforming participants,promoting social well-being,and fostering place attachment

Understanding visitor experiences is essential if park managers are to facilitate beneficial outcomes for both individuals and society. We investigated visitor experiences in a special model of thematically connected guided walking, biking, and 4WD tours in Australian national parks. Outcomes attained by first-time and repeat participants were assessed by questionnaires with more detailed insights from semi-structured interviews with repeat participants. Participants developed strong social ties with community members and experienced significant improvements in health, well-being, and competence, gaining a sense of achievement from mastering a challenge with positive implications for their lives beyond the tours. The tour series performed well in achieving visitor satisfaction, repeat participation, and word-of-mouth recommendation. The experience increased participants’ attachment to national parks, reinforcing their sense of environmental stewardship. The findings are especially relevant to efforts in parks and elsewhere to better integrate senior citizens into the community and provide opportunities to increase their physical, mental, and social well-being. Such opportunities become limited, for example, when people retire from work or suffer health impairment. The tour series proved an effective tool for outcome-focused park management, providing significant personal benefits to participants with positive implications for larger societal benefits, plus political and financial advantages for park managements.     

Local discourses and international initiatives: sociocultural sustainability of tourism in Oulanka National Park,Finland

National parks have become important tourist attractions and tools for regional development. New international initiatives, such as PAN (Protected Area Network) Parks in Europe, now promote sustainable tourism in protected areas. This paper examines the sociocultural sustainability of tourism perceived by local stakeholders of Oulanka National Park in northeastern Finland. The central question concerns the role of PAN Parks certification in community and tourism development. Four discourses were identified, based on 40 semi-structured interviews exploring different views on sociocultural development pertaining to tourism in the national park: (1) integrating nature-based tourism and conservation, (2) defending the rights of local people, (3) stressing the economic utilization of nature and (4) accepting tourism development and the national park. Although local stakeholders mostly have a positive perception of tourism in the park, it cannot be concluded whether the park facilitates development in a sustainable manner or not. Key problems identified are lack of participation opportunities and contradictions with traditional subsistence economies. The various positions of stakeholders in these discourses tend to influence their views on sustainability. Findings imply the necessity to monitor the distribution of benefits and burdens of park development holistically to multiple stakeholders.     

Tourism,Marketing and Sustainable Development in the English National Parks: The Role of National Park Authorities

This paper examines the work of the English National Park Authorities (NPAs) in relation to aspects of the development of sustainable tourism. The NPAs have implicitly sought to achieve sustainable tourism development since the parks were first designated, striving to balance the needs of visitors and the environment within the context of living, working landscapes. Studies have revealed, however, that some NPAs are not fully championing sustainable tourism development. The paper examines the NPA's use of marketing and marketing perspectives in encouraging sustainable tourism, exploring attitudes, roles and activities. A diverse, piecemeal and sometimes underinformed approach is revealed. The paper concludes with ways forward for English NPAs and for other protected area management organisations.     

A method for testing the effect of management interventions on the satisfaction and loyalty of national park visitors

Providing visitors with satisfying experiences is integral to park management. Research has inferred the determinants of satisfaction and loyalty through theorizing, observational studies, and statistical correlations. This article advocates randomized experiments as a complementary method for testing the causal effect of selected management interventions that change service quality on satisfaction and loyalty. An experiment using ranger presence and enhanced toilets in a West Australian national park is used to illustrate the approach. The presence of rangers caused significantly improved satisfaction with rangers, related service quality attributes, and overall satisfaction, but not loyalty. Enhancing toilets had nonsignificant impacts. These results strongly suggest the need for further visitor-focused experimental research to complement the growing body of research in national parks investigating the complex relationship among service quality, satisfaction, and loyalty.     

Social marketing,sustainable tourism,and small/medium size tourism enterprises: challenges and opportunities for changing guest behaviour

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the impact on the guest experience of initiatives promoting water efficient behaviour in small/medium-sized enterprises (SMTEs) offering tourism accommodation. Interviews with 16 SMTE managers revealed businesses were unable to incorporate many initiatives previously examined in the literature, due to the small size of their businesses. In the interviews, however, they contributed three new ideas not previously examined in existing sustainable tourism dialogues. A subsequent questionnaire (n = 408) was administered to potential guests to better understand their water use behaviour, explore how initiatives might impact their accommodation experience, and to assess guest reactions to social marketing messages. Eight initiatives and five messages were tested. Cluster analysis revealed three distinct water user segments with one cluster showing the greatest promise for targeting to increase return on investment. Guests reported the highest positive impact on their experience from initiatives SMTEs stated were not operationally viable. This may indicate that larger firms have a competitive advantage over SMTEs if applying social marketing to change guest behaviour. However, the study found that two of the new initiatives, suggested by SMTE managers as more appropriate to their businesses, would be viable in engaging guests and at acceptably low costs.     

Sustainability through food and conversation: the role of an entrepreneurial restaurateur in fostering engagement with sustainable development issues

Food justice, food cultures and people's engagement with healthy food production and consumption are key contemporary concerns, with a growing sustainable hospitality and tourism literature. Efforts range from narrowly focused initiatives, such as promoting organic produce and fair trade, to more holistic challenges to current systems through initiatives like the slow food and locavore movements, which may represent systemic alternatives. However, little analysis is available on how cafés and restaurants might become sites for experimentation in profitable and just sustainable hospitality, and places for sustainability engagement and education. Focusing on the evolution of a sustainable café in Adelaide, South Australia, this article explores how one entrepreneurial restaurateur uses his café to engage customers and community in a collaborative conversation about sustainable development, food, hospitality and tourism, helping transform our food culture and even lifeways. Our findings indicate the value of deep local embedding as a pathway to meaningful sustainability. The study offers insights into how hospitality and tourism can contribute to dialogues on alternative consumption which may offer visionary pathways to alternative futures. It also explores the role of pioneers in sustainable business and hospitality, their drivers and their views. A forthcoming global research initiative is discussed.     

The influence of artistically recreated nature on the image of tourist destinations: Lanzarote's art,cultural and tourism visitor centres and their links to sustainable tourism marketing

Can distinctive natural assets in tourist destinations be artistically recreated and used to improve destination image and attract more visitors? This paper analyses the formation of the tourist image based on artistically recreated local nature icons, and shows how those images can enhance the overall destination image. It focuses on the island of Lanzarote, a destination with its development based on promoting an environmental image founded on the creation of a network of multifunctional, high-quality art, culture and tourism centres exhibiting artistic recreation of its unique environmental assets. The methodology utilizes a questionnaire (n = 453) structural equations modelling approach in which the overall image of the destination is directly dependent on the image of the environmental conditions and indirectly influenced by the image of the artistically recreated centres. Results show that the destination's image is significantly grounded on the image of the art, culture and tourism centres using art based on Lanzarote's natural assets. They suggest that destinations have relevant opportunities to artistically enhance natural assets to improve their tourist image and marketing, that quality multi-functional visitor centres can be important within a sustainable tourism policy, and part of the emerging breadth of approaches taken by sustainable tourism marketing.