INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH

Int. J. Tourism Res. 2, 437444 (2000)

Current Issue:
Editor: Peter Mason

Neat Trends: Current Issues in Nature,

Eco- and Adventure Tourism
Ralf Buckley*
CRC Tourism and International Centre for Ecotourism Research, Grifth University, Parklands Drive, Gold
Coast 9726, Queensland, Australia

INTRODUCTION
Trying to identify trends as they are happening
is a difcult task, but one that is fundamental
to business planning and public policy alike.
Both of these are routinely subject to academic
analysis, and searching for trends is an
important component. This analysis examines
one sector of the tourism industry, namely that
which depends on outdoor natural environments as a principal attraction or setting for
tourist activities.
Few human social trends are sufciently
powerful and all-encompassing to entrain
entire economies and societies; and even the
largest trends start small. Large-scale trends
are clearly identiable only in retrospect, as
descriptive history; and even then, only
through the cultural perceptive screens of
individual historians and their societies. Perhaps indeed, `the whole world is an enigma, a
harmless enigma that is made terrible by our
own mad attempts to interpret it as though it
had an underlying truth' (Eco, 1989).
From an analytical perspective, therefore,
* Correspondence to: Ralf Buckley, CRC Tourism and
International Centre for Ecotourism Research, Grifth
University, Parklands Drive, Gold Coast 9726, Queensland, Australia.
E-mail: R.Buckley@mailbox.gu.edu.au

the critical issues are scale and priority. Trends

are only recognisable when they become large
enough to be important; but what is important
depends on individual priorities and perceptions. At any time, in any industry sector,
many small-scale independent patterns and
trends can be identied. Some will expand,
others fade; but by recognising them early we
can at least identify some possible futures as
more likely than others. Attempting to identify
these trends, therefore, is akin to postulating
historical hypotheses: open to debate now, and
testable retrospectively in future.
Trends can differ greatly in reliability. In
nature-based tourism, trends driven from
within the industry may be differentiated from
those driven by larger scale social change;
those driven by basic human behaviours and
population dynamics; and those driven by the
basic biophysical characteristics of the planet
(Buckley, 1998a). Trends within the industry
change more quickly, and reverse more readily, than those driven from outside it.
This analysis attempts to address trends that
are sufciently new to be interesting; sufciently established to be identiable; and
driven largely from within the industry, its
clients, and public agencies directly associated
with it.
For convenience these trends are grouped
under four major headings, as follows.
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438
(1) Emergence of a recognisable industry
subsector incorporating nature, eco- and
adventure tourism (NEAT).
(2) Belated recognition of its economic signicance, and initial attempts to quantify
its economic scale.
(3) Growth of commercial tourism and
private recreation in many protected
areas to a scale where it jeopardises
conservation objectives, producing new
economic opportunities for tourism in
other public and private lands.
(4) Increasing interest by both the NEAT
industry and land management agencies
in various forms of environmental performance accreditation, as a marketing
tool for the operators and a management
tool for the agencies.
Clearly, there are links between these. Until
the boundaries of the sector are dened, its
economic scale is not quantiable and its
economic signicance not apparent. Once its
scale is recognised, land management agencies
see it as a potential source of revenue and a
major management issue. Once those aspects
are recognised, they turn to accreditation and
associated fees and permit systems, as a means
to transfer some of their visitor management
requirements and costs to the private sector,
which relies on their public lands as a basis for
business.
RECOGNISABLE `NEAT' SECTOR
There has been endless debate over the precise
meaning of terms such as ecotourism, naturebased tourism and sustainable tourism (Lindberg and McKercher, 1997; Stabler, 1997; Hall
and Lew, 1998; Lindberg et al., 1998; QTTC,
1998; UNESCO, 1998). To date, however, this
debate has not dened a recognisable market
sector analogous to sectors such as MICE
(meetings, incentives, conventions and
events), or VFR (visiting friends and relatives).
The reasons seem to be as follows. Firstly,
these terms confound criteria relating to
product, as in nature-based tourism, with
criteria relating to environmental management, as in sustainable tourism. Secondly,
environmental management may indeed be
an important component of the product, for
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R. Buckley
some clients; so the distinction is not entirely
straightforward. Thirdly, many stakeholders
consider two additional criteria in dening
ecotourism, namely education about the environment, and a contribution to conservation
(Buckley, 1994, 1998b); and different stakeholders use these criteria in different combinations.
Thus for tourism marketers, almost any
form of nature-based tourism is advertised as
ecotourism, irrespective of environmental
management, education or conservation. Some
community based environmental groups
would not classify tourism as ecotourism
unless it incorporates all four of these components. Indeed, some such groups have coined
terms such as `eco-terrorism' to describe the
growth of high-impact tourism in natural areas
(Hanneberg, 1994; McLaren, 1998). Government agencies in developing nations or depressed rural and regional economies use the
term to mean tourism growth that is based on
local natural and cultural features and provides both local employment and a boost to the
regional economy.
I suggest that there is now substantial
coalescence, in markets, operators and concepts, between nature-based tourism, ecotourism, adventure travel and outdoor recreation; and that this coalescence is sufcient to
recognise a distinct nature, eco- and adventure
tourism (NEAT) sector, as least as well dened
as MICE or VFR.
Note that the NEAT sector does not include
so-called 3S or 4S tourism (sun, sand, surf
and/or sex), because the latter is largely urban.
In particular, the nal S is commonly linked to
built beachside attractions, whether cafes or
casinos, surf clubs or nightclubs. Of course,
there are overlaps. There are NEAT operators
who offer tours to wilderness beaches; and any
group activity may potentially offer new social
opportunities. There are also tourists who buy
products in both NEAT and 3S sectors; just as
there are MICE travellers who buy a 3S or
NEAT add-on. The NEAT sector, where nature
and adventure are the product's primary
attraction, however, is quite well differentiated
from 3S packages.
Nature, eco- and adventure tourism is a
product sector. The products of NEAT do not
necessarily incorporate best-practice environInt. J. Tourism Res. 2, 437444 (2000)

NEAT Trends
mental management, nor an educational component or a contribution to conservation. Some
do, some do not. Those that do, may or may
not be considered as ecotourism, depending
on denitions; but by any denition, ecotourism is part of the NEAT sector.
ECONOMIC SIZE AND SIGNIFICANCE
There has been considerable debate in many
countries over the economic size and signicance of the ecotourism subsector. On the one
hand, some countries consider their entire
tourism industry to be nature-based. On the
other, academic analysts have suggested that
only one or two per cent of Canada or
Australia's tourism products qualify as ecotourism in the strict sense of the word
(McKercher, 1998).
The difculty is that the more complex and
stringent denitions of ecotourism are not
easily translated into forms suitable for collecting economic statistics. From an environmental perspective it may be useful to consider an
ecotourism continuum, based on the aggregate
degree to which a tour operator or activity
complies with the various criteria for ecotourism. From a marketing perspective it may
be useful to ask how signicant each of the
components of ecotourism are in inuencing
tourism product purchasing decisions by
individual tourists.
From an economic perspective, however, it
is more meaningful if the tourism sector can
be partitioned into mutually exclusive and
measurable subsectors with no gaps or overlaps. The NEAT concept makes this feasible.
The total value of the NEAT subsector in the
USA, including equipment, has been estimated
at $220 billion per annum, or about half the
size of the tourism industry as a whole. About
half of this represents equipment, about oneseventh represents tours, and most of the
remainder is xed-site adventure attractions
(Mallett, 1998). Preliminary estimates for Australia, assuming a similar structure to the USA,
indicate that the NEAT sector is worth $715
billion per annum, or about one-quarter to onethird of the total tourism industry (Buckley,
unpublished; cited in QTTC, 1998). This is a
1998 supply-side estimate. A 1995 demandside estimate, calculated by questioning inCopyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

439
dividual tourists, was slightly lower at $6.6
billion (Blamey and Hatch, 1998). This, however, was only for international visitors and
only for the nature tourism sector, i.e. excluding adventure tourism, equipment, etc. A 1998
demand-side estimate (Tourism Queensland,
1999) indicated that about 27% of tourists in
Australia are `denite ecotourists' distinguished by multiple criteria such as taking
vacations in natural locations, undertaking
nature-based activities, and appreciating
nature and wanting to learn about it. These
estimates, derived from quite different approaches, are in surprisingly good agreement.
The economic signicance of the NEAT
sector to the tourism industry, regional and
national economies, and public land management has only recently begun to be recognised.
This is due to a combination of factors, of
which the growth of the sector is only one.
From the tourism industry perspective, the
most important factor is the increasing commercialisation of outdoor recreation. Most of
the activities concerned have a long history in
private recreation, but because this did not
involve commercial tour operators and agents
it was not counted as part of the tourism
industry. Although it involved considerable
expenditure per person per day, people used
privately owned vehicles and equipment and
their expenditure was not distinguished from
domestic and household activities.
The growth of outdoor recreation hence
became apparent principally through booming
sales of recreational equipment. As well as
growing rapidly in sales volume, this equipment has become very much more high-tech,
specialised and expensive. Outdoor recreation
in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s was carried out
largely with inexpensive army surplus equipment (Mallett, 1998). Now, however, even the
manufacture of water lters and camping
stoves is a multibillion dollar business worldwide; let alone skiing equipment, recreational
boats and clothing. Because this equipment
expenditure has not been counted as part of
the tourism industry, the tourism industry has
not recognised the economic signicance of the
NEAT sector.
Currently, a combination of social factors is
leading to sudden and rapid growth in
recognition of NEAT's importance. The conInt. J. Tourism Res. 2, 437444 (2000)

440
tinuing and increasing urbanisation of western
societies has created a growing class of
relatively well-off people who have some
appreciation of the environment from TV
programmes and magazine articles, but little
or no contact with natural or even rural
landscapes in their everyday lives; and have
never acquired the basic skills to live and
travel safely in such environments. They have
relatively little leisure time in which to learn
those skills and often do not possess the
equipment with which to apply them. Increasingly, therefore, they rely on commercial
guides and outtters to provide packaged
adventure and nature tours. The economic
growth in NEAT is thus due at least in part to a
shift from private outdoor recreation to commercial tourism.
MANAGING TOURISM IN PARKS AND
FORESTS
As with private recreation, commercial NEAT
occurs principally on public lands, especially
national parks. The continuing and increasing
growth in the number of visitors to national
parks (Worboys 1998) is forcing park management agencies to spend more and more on
visitor infrastructure, management and education, so that they have less and less to spend on
management of their natural resources for
conservation. Hence, they are in desperate
need of increased funding, either by an
increased government budget allocation, or
by direct charges and levies on visitors and
tour operators (Buckley 1998b, 1999b).
To lobby for government funding, they need
to demonstrate the economic signicance of
the nature tourism industry, which is based
largely on parks. To charge visitors and tour
operators, they need to treat them as commercial clients; and themselves, at least for this
purpose, as part of the commercial tourism
industry. Hence they need information on the
size and the geographical, competitive and
price structures of the NEAT sector. Of course,
they also need better information on management tools and indicators to ensure that the
environmental impacts of private recreational
visitors and commercial tours do not cause
irretrievable damage to the primary conservation values of the parks concerned, as that is
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R. Buckley
the reason for their existence. Either way,
however, the economic scale and activities of
the NEAT sector have become a key issue for
national parks and heritage management
agencies.
In many countries, large areas of public
lands, including areas of high value for nature
tourism, are controlled by state and national
forestry agencies, and the NEAT sector is
becoming increasingly important for these
agencies also. Controversies over the impacts
of logging and woodchipping on forest biodiversity, and the relatively low economic
returns to the public from commercial logging
and chipping, have focused attention on the
potential value of tourism as a major land use
in public forests (Driml, 1997; Gallon, 1999;
Ward, 1999).
In countries such as the USA, the Forest
Service has long since set aside major areas of
the lands under its control as wilderness areas,
managed for recreation; and for many decades
it has operated a programme of trails, signs,
rangers, maps, minimal-impact training, permitting systems, etc. In addition, many of the
major ski resorts in the USA are on Forest
Service land. According to the Chief Executive
of the US Forest Service, the value of the Forest
Service estate for tourism is currently about 25
times greater than it is for logging, and this
differential is likely to increase (Dombeck,
1998; Johanssen, 1998; USDA, 1999).
In Australia, tourism in State forests is still in
its infancy. Although some States, notably
Western Australia, Tasmania and more recently New South Wales, have encouraged
commercial tour operators in State forests,
others are only now beginning to contemplate
this possibility. Although increasing tourism
in State forests would improve the economic
return to the forest management agencies and
increase economic inputs to regional economies, there are sectors of the forest industries
that reap considerable economic benets from
current arrangements, and might well be
reluctant to have these arrangements challenged by the growth of forest tourism. There
was initial opposition to tourism from privatesector forestry employees, both in Australia as
for example in the Wet Tropics of Queensland
World Heritage Area, and in the USA (Forbes,
1998). In many areas, however, it would be
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NEAT Trends
possible for tourism and logging to coexist,
over a long time-scale, as long as sufcient
areas of old-growth forests are left unlogged as
core tourist attractions.
Nature tourism in public forests is clearly
part of the NEAT sector. Whether it would
constitute ecotourism depends on denition
and implementation. Evidently it is naturebased. It may or may not be managed for
minimal impact, but in any event its impacts
will be less than those associated with logging;
hence the argument to concentrate higherimpact nature tourism activities in state forests
rather than national parks. There is no reason
why it should not have an educational component, and this can address forest history and
management practices as well as ora and
fauna sighting and similar conventional interpretive materials.
Whether it contributes to conservation will
depend on how it is done. It has the potential,
however, to make a very large contribution,
perhaps larger than any other form of tourism
(Buckley, 1998c). One mechanism for this is to
reduce the impacts on national parks, by
syphoning off some of the visitor pressure.
Whether this happens in practice will depend
on park management policies and market
conditions in the NEAT industry. The second
and potentially more signicant mechanism is
that in the long run, forest tourism may assist
in reducing impacts, including clearance, in
forest areas of high conservation value. Even if
tourism is initially introduced purely as an
adjunct to current logging practices, if its
greater economic signicance becomes clear
before a particular area is next due to be cut,
tourism could catalyse a change in land
management practices. Of course, this will be
of little value for either conservation or
tourism, if all remaining old-growth areas are
logged before being made available for tourism.
The growth of forest tourism in areas
managed by forestry agencies could potentially avoid a major conservation problem that
has been prevalent recently in countries such
as Australia, to the detriment of the tourism
industry: as soon as there is the slightest
suggestion that the uses of any area of land
might be restricted for conservation purposes,
the landholders or land management agencies
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441
often move as quickly as possible to destroy its
conservation value, so as to not lose any
measure of control over its use. The foreshadowing of controls on clearing of native
vegetation in South Australia in the early
1980s, for example, led to widespread clearance by farmers not only in South Australia but
also in neighbouring Victoria. In New South
Wales, any inkling that an area of State forest
might be converted to national park has
precipitated immediate and complete logging
of the area concerned. This is demonstrated
very clearly by the timing of peaks in the
annual volume of timber sold (Ward, 2000).
PERFORMANCE STANDARDS AND
ACCREDITATION
Along with the growing interest in the economics of ecotourism and the NEAT sector as a
whole, there is increasing interest on the part
of land managers, on ways to screen and
improve the environmental management performance of tour companies operating in the
areas concerned. Approaches include: screening processes during the issue of permits;
accreditation of operators; compulsory training courses for guides; cooperative environmental monitoring programmes that focus the
attention of both guides and clients on environmental issues; and guidelines for bestpractice environmental management that provide detailed instructions for guides, and
criteria for clients to judge whether guides
meet industry standards. All of these approaches are in use in different parts of the
world.
For example, in Australia there is an
industry association, the Ecotourism Association of Australia, that has established a
government-endorsed National Ecotourism
Accreditation Programme at the operator
level. This is a voluntary programme, with
three levels of accreditation from 2000. The
scheme lists a range of relatively detailed
environmental performance criteria for various types of eco-tourism activities, and applicants must submit a dossier demonstrating
which of these they meet, and to what degree.
As advertised, the scheme also includes an
audit programme to spot-check the accuracy of
such claims. This is due to become operational
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442
in 2000. As of January 2000, the scheme had
137 accredited products from 101 member
companies (EAA pers.comm.14.02.2000).
The use of best-practice environmental
management guidelines is most advanced in
the USA, through the Leave-No-Trace1 (LNT)
programme established by the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) for the US
Forest Service (USFS) and other agencies. The
basic LNT principles have for several years
been printed on all new USFS wilderness
maps. There are LNT master classes for USFS
trainers, who in turn train forest rangers in
LNT principles and ways to improve their
adoption by visitors and guides. There is also
an expanding set of detailed LNT booklets for
particular environments and activities, compiled by the staff of LNT Inc, a subsidiary of
NOLS.
In Australia, there are four States with alpine
areas, and their national parks agencies have
jointly compiled a series of minimal-impact
brochures and posters. These are less detailed
than the LNT equivalents in the USA. Minimal-impact materials for off-road vehicles are
available through the Tread Lightly1 organisation, and on the website of the Western
Australia Department of Conservation and
Land Management (1999). A series of more
detailed environmental management guidelines is under production by the Cooperative
Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism, a
consortium of universities, industry and government, in conjunction with Tourism Council
Australia, a peak tourism industry association.
Also in Australia, a number of national
parks, notably Kakadu and Uluru, run compulsory environmental training courses for
commercial guides operating in those parks.
These are brief and practical, and have been
well received and commended by commercial
operators (Weeks, 1996). Various countries
also have cooperative monitoring programmes
where commercial tour operators routinely
report to park management on the condition of
the natural environment along their regular
routes.
Accreditation of individual guides is furthest advanced in African nations, notably South
Africa and Zimbabwe, where competence with
a large-calibre rearm has long been a requirement for safari guides. An accreditation
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R. Buckley
scheme based on African bushcraft skills has
hence been in operation for many years, and
this has been extended recently to include
environmental skills. In Australia, the Ofce
for National Tourism (ONT) has funded the
Ecotourism Association of Australia to construct a National Nature and Ecotour Guide
Certication Program, in parallel to NEAP
which accredits individual tour products. This
is an important step. A recent study of
environmental performance in commercial
whitewater raft and kayak operators worldwide (Buckley, in review) has shown that bestpractice environmental management is
achieved only if the retail arm of the company,
the operating arm of the company, and
individual guides are all committed to best
practice.
CONCLUSION
Ecotourism still means different things to
different people. Use of the term ecotourism
in tourism industry advertising, government
organisations and mass media reporting seems
to be increasing. As there is no standard to
restrict its use in advertising, the size of the
ecotourism sector is unknown.
There is a well-differentiated sector of the
tourism industry that relies on outdoor natural
environments. It maybe referred to as NEAT;
nature, eco- and adventure tourism. It also
includes commercial outdoor recreation, education and sports. It is a large sector, at least a
quarter of the total tourism industry in developed countries such as the USA and Australia,
and more in developing nations. Nature, ecoand adventure tourism is a product sector; ecotourism is a subsidiary segment dened by
management criteria.
The NEAT sector has considerable economic
signicance world-wide. Industry associations
and governments have been slow to appreciate
this, but recognition is increasing. Part of the
economic growth of the NEAT sector is due to
commercialisation of private outdoor recreation, and part to the increasing sophistication
and expense of equipment, as well as the
increasing popularity of NEAT activities.
Most of the growth in NEAT is occurring in
and around national parks. This is generating
increasing interest in the economics and
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NEAT Trends
management of protected areas, the role of
NEAT in contributing to operating costs for
parks, and the role of NEAT as an alternative
or adjunct to logging in public forests.
The growth of NEAT in national parks and
protected areas is increasing pressure for land
management agencies to adopt operator permitting systems that encourage best-practice
environmental management by the operators,
and which raise funds for park operating costs.
As the number of commercial tour operators in
protected areas continues to grow, there is
increasing interest in screening, audit and
accreditation to ensure that their environmental management is adequate.
As NEAT is increasing and remaining wilderness areas are shrinking, best-practice environmental management (BPEM) in NEAT is
becoming increasingly signicant. This includes minimal-impact education and interpretation.
The protability of NEAT, and its ability to
provide income for rural communities is
providing incentives for private farmlands
and public forests to turn to NEAT as an
alternative or additional land use.
In conclusion, therefore, it seems that
although ecotourism, with its emphasis on
minimal-impact management, environmental
education, and a contribution to conservation
currently makes up only a small proportion of
the large and economically signicant NEAT
sector, these characteristics are becoming
increasingly signicant for the NEAT sector
as a whole. Ecotourism may yet catalyse
change.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank the Editor and two anonymous
referees for forcing me to confront and clarify
precisely what this contribution is intended to
achieve, and why I should have the temerity to
attempt it.
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