Abstract
This volume examines the principles and practices of ecotourism from an analytical rather than a normative perspective, i.e. it attempts to summarize, analyse and present the various links between tourism and environment as they actually operate in the real world, rather than how they might ideally operate in a conceptual sense. Chapter 1 deals with concepts and definitions. Chapter 2 outlines the commercial context for ecotourism, considering tourism sub-sectors that are closely related to ecotourism but distinguishable on various criteria. Chapters 3-5 examine the basics of ecotourism business operations, products and marketing, leading to a broader review of the economics of the ecotourism sub-sector in Chapter 6. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 consider environmental management, impacts and contributions to conservation, leading on to guiding and interpretation in Chapter 10, social and community issues in Chapter 11 and access to operating areas in Chapter 12. This in turn leads to broader-scale planning aspects in Chapter 13, and triple-bottom-line accounting aspects in Chapter 14. The concluding chapter then evaluates practical progress in ecotourism to date, against all of these criteria. Each chapter contains up to five components as follows: review (a general overview of the chapter topic in non-technical language), research (summaries of recent research literature tabulated by topic and geographic region); revision (lists of major issues in bullet-point format); reflections (some questions to provoke further consideration); and readings (supplementary materials on specific sub-topics).