G.M. Timčák

Technical University Košice, Slovakia

GEOTOURISM - ETHICAL ISSUES

Geotourism is an area of tourist activities that are mostly linked with geological, geomorphological and nature based features. Whatever the specific orientation, it tends to bring more people to the natural environment. In nature, special paths are designed for tourists (pedestrian, cyclotourists or other) to show the beauties, but to minimise the environmental loading and stress. The problem is that the visitors have to have some scenic or special experience (e.g. waterfall, cave, rock outcrop, plants, animals), but how to provide it without intrusion and interference (physical interference, pollution, noise, litter, etc.)?

Thus for example Geoparks are one of the specific areas linked to geotourism. As they are usually protected areas, on -site information about the inside contents of a geopark is provided through visit trajectories that enable only viewing (i.e. non-contact experience). This, however does tend to overload part of the geopark and the adjacent areas.

In protected areas there are legitimate tracks for pedestrians and/or cyclotourists. But how to prevent both from trespassing? The experience in Slovakia shows that there is considerable damage due to illegitimate passages of visitors through protected areas.

This poses serious questions regarding the ethical conscience of visitors. Evidently special education and commitment is needed.

In some protected areas a part (usually about 10%) of the protected area is “sacrified” to visitors, so that some funds are raised for maintenance and research. In other areas multimedial information centres are built at the edges of the protected areas in order to inform, entertain, but to keep off visitors. Is this the way?

All these are questions pertaining to the area of sustainable tourism activity design. The paper attempts to forward some solutions.