Whether ecotourists can be a strong weapon to reduce the ecological impact?

 Whether ecotourists can be a strong weapon to reduce the ecological impact?

Destinations nowadays are willing to minimize adverse environmental impacts(the ‘ecological footprint’) to preserve the destination’s natural and cultural resources for both residents and future generations of tourists. Many measures have been done to increase the ecological sustainability of destinations. Such as Supply side of Tourism (Figure 1):

Figure 1 : Supply side of Tourism

Three examples of supply-side educational efforts are noteworthy:

How destinations and organizations think about the eco-tourists?

   Firstly, according to the professional research, there is no research which has been undertaken to identify ecotourists among the general population of tourists. Practically, all studies aimed at understanding the segment of tourists with a low environmental footprint have focused on the ecotourism sector, which is typically limited to nature-based forms of tourism. This is reflected in the review of definitions of ecotourists.

  Secondly, with respect to the characteristics of ecotourists, destinations found that few personal characteristics had been examined in the research published to date, leading to the conclusion that all we really currently know about ecotourist is that they are more educated, earn more money and are interested in learning. 

   Finally, the current body of knowledge of ecotourists has a number of limitations which suggest that destinations need to do further research into this market segment. 

    In conclusion, from the perspective of destinations, in order to solve the negative environmental impacts, they should not only address the effects occurring at the destination, but account for the full ‘global ecological footprint’ (Understanding more about the ecotourists).

Reference

· Crouch, G., Dolnicar, S., & Long, P. (2008). Environment-friendly tourists: What do we really know about them? Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 16(2), 197-210. doi:10.2167/jost738.0