YorkSpace
    • English
    • français
  • English 
    • English
    • français
  • Login
View Item 
  •   YorkSpace Home
  • Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC)
  • FES Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Series
  • View Item
  •   YorkSpace Home
  • Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC)
  • FES Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Series
  • View Item
JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

The Role of Tour Operators in Visitor Management Planning: The Case Study of Algonquin Provincial Park

Thumbnail
View/Open
Lauren King.pdf (1.402Mb)
Date
2012
Author
King, Lauren

Metadata
Show full item record
Abstract
The first State of Ontario’s Protected Areas Report (2011) identified visitor impacts as one of the known threats to the maintenance or restoration of ecological integrity in Ontario’s provincial parks. Algonquin Provincial Park (APP) sustains the impacts of nearly million visitors per year (Ministry of Natural Resources, 2010), more than any other provincial park in Ontario. To mitigate these visitor impacts, APP has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with The Friends of Algonquin Park and the Algonquin Backcountry Recreationalists to be the first provincial park in Ontario to officially adopt and deliver the Leave No Trace (LNT) program in Spring 2011. Due to limited funding, staff, and time, tour operators operating in APP may also be potentially important delivery-agents of the LNT program. Research shows that interpretation, through personal contact, is an effective visitor management tactic that can be used to encourage visitors to adopt an enhanced conservation ethic and modify their behaviour, such as LNT principles, in order to reduce their ecological impacts on the protected area. This case study used three methods to examine the type of interpretation currently delivered by a tour operator offering guided canoe trips in APP: (1) literature and documentation review; (2) focused interviews to determine the general manager’s, guides, and clients knowledge and use of LNT principles; and (3) participant observation to identify the actual LNT messages delivered and behaviour modelled by guides. The findings of this study reveal that guides are somewhat familiar with the LNT program and are practicing at least one of the seven LNT principles while canoe trip guiding. While litter and campfire-related impacts are identified as the most commonly observed visitor-related impacts by the guides, guides are more apt to properly dispose of waste, but still rely solely on campfires to cook all the meals at the campsite as well as having a nightly pleasure fire, despite having to collect appropriate firewood along portage trails or around the perimeter of the lake, due to barren campsites. These findings show that tour operators can play a much greater role in delivering the LNT program; however, guides require additional LNT training, in order to strengthen their role as delivery-agents of the LNT program in APP. Enhancing tour operators role in delivering LNT program will require greater involvement in VMP through collaborative planning, the establishment of a tour operators association to represent the collective interests of tour operators, and the use of a business licence scheme to ensure tour operators are incorporating the LNT program into guided canoe trips.
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10315/20826
Collections
  • FES Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Series

All items in the YorkSpace institutional repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved except where explicitly noted.

YorkU LogoContact Us | Send Feedback
link to sitemap

 

Browse

All of YorkSpaceCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

My Account

LoginRegister

Statistics

View Usage Statistics

All items in the YorkSpace institutional repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved except where explicitly noted.

YorkU LogoContact Us | Send Feedback
link to sitemap