Consequently, ecotourism is a natural-oriented sustainable tourism (the natural
orientation is determined by tourism’s demand characteristics, and sustainability – by
economic benefit of supporting the quality of the environment).
According to the definitions of the WTO, the International Union for the
Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the International Ecotourism Society, and the World
Wildlife Fund focus on the environmental orientation of ecotourism. In this way,
ecotourism - is all forms of tourism, in which the main tourists’ motivation is
monitoring and communication with nature, and which contribute to the preservation
of the environment and cultural heritage, with minimal influence on them.
Ecotourism contains three compulsory components:
- nature cognition;
- preservation of the ecosystem;
- respecting for the interests of the local population.
Accordingly, the main functions of ecotourism are: recreational, environmental,
educational, pedagogic, health-improvement, socio-economic (improving the life
quality of the local population, creating jobs, etc.).
The most promising and popular types of ecological tourism are: scientific
tourism; tours for recognizing nature; adventure tourism ("difficult ecotourism",
because the need for adventure prevails over nature conservation), travel to natural
reserves, rural tourism.
Together with the diversification of ecotourism activities, the process of
approaching ecotourism to other types is observed – beach holidays, cruises, business
trips, which also include eco-excursions. That’s why the boundaries of ecological
tourism are gradually blurred.
A new promising activity in the sphere of sustainable tourism became a
geotourism at the national and European geoparks - territories with unique geological
objects that carry information about the development and features of the Earth's crust.
An important goal of geoparks is to attract the local population to the sustainable use
of landscapes’ benefits, their conservation and development.
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