CONCLUSIONS
The study revealed that opinion leaders from public and special
interest groups involved in the tourism debate in Australia’s ANP do
not consider “tourism” to be an absolute concept. Indeed, tourism and
non-tourism activities were identified as following a seven-staged
continuum. At one end of the continuum is the belief that tourism is
essentially similar to all recreational uses of the park. At the other end,
tourism is considered to be an inappropriate, exploitative activity that
is at odds with the purpose of national parks. In a similar fashion, most
opinion leaders also made a clear and unequivocal distinction between
tourists and recreational park users. In both instances, the distinction
is made in progressively negative value-based terms, rather than by
empirical time or space criteria normally used to define tourism.
This study highlights some challenges for tourism in natural areas.
In spite of logical and compelling arguments to the contrary, the
political debate as driven by interest groups, is still strongly influenced
by the artificial distinction between tourism and non-tourism
uses. Given the responses to the attitudinal statements, concerns
about tourism are as much value-driven as they are land use management
based. Moreover, the use of the “T” word appears to elicit a
considerable amount of antipathy among some opinion leaders.
Tourism clearly means different things to different opinion leaders
and elicits different responses about its acceptability in a national
park setting. These opinions appear to be reflected largely in how
their authors perceive tourism or tourists as being different from
non-touristic park uses or users. No uniformity is evident among
these opinions. This study highlights the futility of trying to distinguish
artificially between “tourism” and “recreational” park uses in
the ANP because tourism appears to be such an amorphous, emotive
word. Instead, the dominant management issue must be the
management of acceptable park uses, rather than the identification
of appropriate park users.