Policy instruments for sustainable tourism management in national parks: A comparative analysis of Colombia, Costa Rica, and Spain

Abstract

Despite the current health crisis, global trends indicate that tourism all over the world will increase, especially in natural areas. This paper therefore aims to analyse the policy instruments for sustainable tourism management in national parks. The research focuses on three countries and two national parks in each: Los Nevados and Chingaza in Colombia, Manuel Antonio and Volcán Poás in Costa Rica, and Teide and Sierra de Guadarrama in Spain. A content analysis of official documents is carried out to identify organizational, normative and programmatic instruments. Organizational instruments for both tourism and the environment are represented graphically for each country, keywords are used to analyse normative instruments, and eleven topics and thirty-five subtopics are proposed as a means of exploring the inclusion of sustainable tourism criteria in programmatic instruments. The results show the areas where we believe there is room for improvement. These include coordination between those organizations in charge of protecting the environment and natural areas and those in charge of tourism, the inclusion of sustainable tourism in normative instruments, and greater emphasis to be placed on key topics for sustainability in the programmatic instruments, including carbon footprints and accessibility. Keywords: National parks, sustainable tourism, policy instruments