Determinants of tourist satisfaction with national park guides and facilities in the Galápagos

Abstract

Galápagos National Park is iconic for its biodiversity, its role in evolutionary science and as a tourist destination. Over 200,000 tourists visit per year, leading to tension between development and environmental protection. One way to alleviate tourist pressure is to increase visitor understanding for conservation through environmental education, delivered through national park guides and interpretation centres. This study investigated tourist satisfaction with official national park guides and park facilities. A latent class model of nearly 9000 tourists indicated that older women on cruise tours who had planned their trips well in advance were most satisfied with both. Younger men on short, spontaneous land-based visits were more likely not to be satisfied. However, while creating tourist products to satisfy young men could provide short-term economic benefits, such strategies could have long-term disadvantages if they threaten the Galápagos wildlife that gives the islands a competitive advantage over other sites.

Keywords:

• Environmental education
• latent class analysis
• nature-based tourism
• world heritage site

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all tourists to Galápagos who participated in this survey and all staff from Ministry of Tourism of Ecuador in Galápagos who helped collecting the data between 2011 and 2013.