Opportunities of Financing the Nature-Based Tourism

The parks generally offer the most important component of nature-based tourism (ecotourism), but obtain little from the benefits it brings about. The revenue obtained by national parks or other protected areas are generally centralised and managed by different agencies, so only a part of this revenue is coming back to the protected area where it was collected. The degree of return of visitors, the duration of visits, the visitors’ satisfaction and the quality of services - all these will suffer when the return rate of the collected revenue is reduced. Many governments see ecotourism as being a very important economic instrument for a sustainable development. It’s a shame that many of these governments do not invest enough in the personnel training, in the infrastructure or in other resources necessary to support this type of tourism. This leads to the degradation of many of these protected areas under the action of tourism.