Tourism Transformations in Protected Area Gateway Communities

Gateway communities are those located adjacent to protected areas and are often the communities most impacted by tourism visitation and are dependent on tourism revenue. This book presents informed, interpreted, and nuanced approaches towards protect area management and conservation, based on bottom-up local experiences by the gateway communities.

Gateway communities that neighbour parks and protected areas are impacted by tourism, while facing unique circumstances related to protected area management. Economic dependency remains a serious challenge for these communities, especially in a climate of neoliberalism, top-down policy environments, and park closures related to environmental degradation or government budgets. The collection of works in this edited book provide bottom-up, informed, and nuanced approaches to tourism management using local experiences from gateway communities and protected areas management emerging from a decade of guidelines, rulemaking, and exclusive decision-making. Global perspectives are presented and contextualized at the local level of gateway communities in an attempt to balance nature, community, and commerce, while supporting the triple bottom line of sustainable tourism. While anticipating a post-COVID 19 global shift, readers are encouraged to think through transformation and resiliency in regard to how the flux of supply vs demand alters gateway community perspectives on tourism. Specific features of this book include:· Focus on transformations, which provides insight into the complex and dynamic nature of gateway communities.· Multidisciplinary, multi-cultural insights into protected area management.· Applied and conceptual chapters from global perspectives.