Evaluation of Shangri-La County’s tourism resources and ecotourism carrying capacity

Abstract

Ecotourism is an important path to sustainable tourism that has experienced rapid development in recent years. Thus, ecological principles have been considered as the guidelines for tourism and the need to protect the eco-environment has increased substantially. On this basis, the ecotourism planning, a new paradigm for tourism planning, has emerged and it has benefits in terms of both economic development and environmental conservation. The ecotourism planning is based on two important criteria: local tourism resources and ecotourism carrying capacity. In this study, we aimed to investigate the local tourism resources and calculate the ecotourism carrying capacity of Shangri-La County as an example. The results showed that Shangri-La County has abundant tourism resources and a vast diversity of tourism products. However, the natural resources in Shangri-La County are currently being exploited beyond the carrying capacity. Solutions to this problem mainly include sustainable exploitation of tourism resources; better handling of tourism demands by improving the repartitioning of tourism flow; and the development of a digital system to facilitate the management of tourism.

Keywords:

• ecotourism
• carrying capacity
• regulatory measures
• Shangri-La
• tourism resources

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Science and Technology Support Program (2011BAC09B04-03 & 2013BAJ04B01), the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (2013J05061), and the opening foundation of Institute of Remote Sensing and Earth Sciences, Hangzhou Normal University (PDKF2012YG08).