Description:
Mountains are important assets for the tourism industry. The resources they are endowed with provide the attractions for visitors to these highland areas. This makes mountain areas one of the best visited tourist destinations in the world. However, the fragility of mountain areas makes them vulnerable to various forces of change including environmental pressures, governance circumstances and social economic factors surrounding them. This then presents precautions on the need to take care of the mountains and their resources and adopt tourism practices that are sensitive to mountain environments, socioeconomic and cultural setting of the places where they are found. Hence over the years, there have been calls for the need to offer environmentally sensitive, socioeconomically sustainable and culturally responsible tourism practices in mountain areas (Kruk et al. 2007).
Mountains have been a source of wonder and inspiration for human societies and cultures since time immemorial. Our fascination for these unique wilderness areas has been partly based on their remoteness and inaccessibility. Yet, today, the elements that attract people to mountains – clean air, diverse landscapes, rich biodiversity, and unique cultures – are under threat, partly because of poorly managed and non-sustainable tourism. Travel to mountain areas, which already attracts up to 20 percent of global tourism, is increasing rapidly. The investment, operational and managerial decisions of tour operators, other tourism professionals and the wider industry are helping to determine the level of both negative and positive impacts of tourism in mountain environments. It is therefore vital to work with this sector to develop and promote sustainable tourism practices (United Nations Environment Programme, 2007). Mountains cover about 27 percent of the world’s land surface, ranging over every continent and all major types of ecosystems, from deserts and tropical forests to polar icecaps. The development of tourism in the various regions and destinations is heterogeneous. The availability of data on the sector in mountain areas is generally scarce, which poses many challenges in benchmarking destinations and opens opportunities for further research on tourism development, demand and impact in mountain regions (Romeo R., Russo, L., Parisi F., Notarianni M., Manuelli S. and Carvao S., UNWTO. 2021. Mountain tourism – Towards a more sustainable path. Rome, FAO).
Keeping above thoughts as foundation deposits for the present book, it will incorporate many essential and burning issues regarding with Mountain tourism, its problems, perspective and prospects in future. The varied spatial differences in global mountain tourism translates itself in varied socio-cultural setups and diverse ecologies thus it also demands for different approaches for developmental plans and tackling the related concerns. The present book is an attempt to collaborate such different approaches through amalgamation of definitions concerned with Mountain Tourism, theories related with sustainable development goals, responsible tourism and mountain IDEAL standards and lastly, justification of them via discussion over in-action plans and case studies from different mountain tourism spots across the globe for instance some examples are, ‘Shirakawa-Go : A successful journey of Japanese village from selection into UNESCO World Heritage Site, tackling the problems of overcrowding and loss of regional identity and then scoring the place in list of Top 100 Sustainable Destination in World’; ‘Trash In Trash Out (TITO) system of solid waste management at Mount Kilimanjaro National Park : An effective learning to handle the increasing tonnage of solid waste generation and imposition of serious challenges in its collection and disposal at various tourist destination especially at tough terrains of mountainous regions’; and a better example of community participation in hospitality and tourism business through Accommodation model of ‘Albergo Diffuso’ adapted in Italy. Such case studies from this book will create a better understanding among researchers, entrepreneurs and policy makers and wide spread its adaptability quotient at various stages and places of tourist destinations at mountains. In context of India, The Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) also attracts tourists and pilgrims from across the world and pilgrimage, spiritualism, hill stations, and adventure tourism have become the predominant attractions for tourists to visit the Himalayan destinations.Thus the tourism industry in the Himalayan states has also experienced continuous growth and increasing diversification over the last few decades to become one of the fastest-growing economic sectors in India. In 2019 India had 1854 million domestic tourist visits, and 140 million of these domestic tourists visited the Himalayan states, whereas the total population of the Himalayan states in 2018-19 was approximately 70 million, so one can easily assess the significance of the tourism industry to the people of the Himalayan states. Tourism and hospitality contribute about $71.5 billion to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and which is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 7.9% from 2013 to 2023 (Niti Aayog, 2018). Theme based tourist circuits developments were undertaken under Swadesh Darshan Scheme. Among 15 thematic circuits, a few are closely related to the IHR such as the North-East Circuit, Eco-circuit, Himalayan Circuit, and Spiritual Circuit. Kaziranga National Park (Assam) has been identified iconic tourist sites among 19 identified sites. Ministry of Tourism sanctioned 18 projects covering all the North Eastern States for Rs. 1,456 crores (US$ 211.35 million) to develop and promote of tourism in the region under Swadesh Darshan and PRASHAD schemes. With the ever-increasing number of tourist arrivals, tourism in the Himalayan ecosystem could be developed and managed sustainably in way of ecofriendly manner and cost effectiveness. Tourism may contribute in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) mainly SDGs 8 (Decent work and economic growth) and SDGs 12 (Responsible consumption and production).
Apart from these, cost effectiveness, local community participation and ecofriendly model of tourism development are the basic ways to approach for sustainable development in these high-altitude remote areas of mountains. Their aloofness from the current pace of development in comparison to other parts of the main land has emerged as big staple for concern and for combating them, cost effectiveness, local community participation and ecofriendly tourism is the collective answer. At global span of view, some of the mountain destinations are unique natural treasure and cost effective also but these tourist places are not highlighted yet for tourists visits. Efforts in a continual manner can be made to give wider coverage to such tourist places as to make the local people custodians of such tourist places as well as increasing their partaking in local tourism policy making and pecuniary gains from the tourism activities in the area.
But in view of targeting them, these efforts for local community participation are entangled with many barriers and can be summarized in four levels viz, practical, socio-cultural, apprehension and institutional level. And to get resolve them, need for both greater advocacy of community participation, better synchronization among concerned government authorities, education and training for locals, and the need to design particular strategies which can encourage local participation that are customized to emerging destination context; these are could be the cure-all tactics (Kala & Bagri, 2018).
Therefore, with the inclusion of above-mentioned issues and challenges, through this book one can find a thematic presentation, theoretical explanation and consequential approaches towards global mountain tourism along with various case studies.
Coverage:
Coverage forthcoming