Constructing partnerships for protected area tourism planning in an era of change and messiness

Abstract

Management of sustainable tourism in protected areas requires trade-offs between two goals: (1) protection of the key values that form the basis for preservation and (2) allowing access to visitors to enjoy and appreciate those values. These trade-offs occur within a context of lack of societal agreement on goals and lack of scientific agreement on the relationships between causes and effects; two conditions needed to identify and implement effective tourism management actions. While much tourism protected area planning has been dominated by a rational–comprehensive model, this approach is increasingly unsuccessful. In such “messy” contexts, partnerships are important tools in constructing the public interest, because they can provide the consensus and learning needed to develop and implement informed actions. Such partnerships do not just happen, they must be carefully engineered. Protected area tourism planning partnerships are characterized by certain attributes: representativeness, a sense of ownership, a learning focus and attention to relationships. However, these attributes are not easily attained, for they are facilitated by several contextual factors and processes such as trust, political and economic power and equitable access to knowledge.