ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about protected area managers and commercial tour operators and how they interact with each other in the Shark Bay World Heritage area in Western Australia. It focuses on case study to illustrate the role power plays between these two parties with both offering nature-based tourism activities in the area. Tourism in the Shark Bay area concentrates at the Francoise Peron national Park as well as the wider marine Park which comprises approximately 70 per cent of the Shark Bay World Heritage Area. The Shark Bay area was inscribed in the United Nations educational, scientific and cultural organisation's (UNESCO) World Heritage listing in 1991 for its Natural Beauty, Biological Diversity, Ecological Processes, and Earth's History all four of the natural categories. Providing tourism products in protected areas is a combined effort of various stakeholders; this chapter specifically examines the working relationships between protected area managers and commercial tour operators in the Shark Bay area.
