ABSTRACT
The United Nations World Tourism Organization tells us that international tourist arrivals in 2013 have been 1,087 million (UNWTO, 2014) and that they are expected to increase at a 3.3 per cent rate until 2030 when they will reach 1.8 billion (UNWTO, 2011). While no such data are available for domestic tourism at the global scale, it is estimated that domestic tourism trips outnumber international trips by more than five times to one (Peeters and Dubois, 2010). Given these figures and the growing interest in nature-based tourism, natural areas worldwide are expected to see dramatically increasing visitor flows in the years to come. This poses enormous challenges about how to minimize the negative impacts of massive visitation on natural resources and visitors’ recreational experience. Transportation will increasingly play a key role in addressing such challenges as both a source of disturbance to be limited and a tool to manage visitor flows more efficiently. While this book has provided a wide overview of the current knowledge and practical experience of sustainable transportation in natural settings, the field is relatively young and much is yet to be explored. The increased ability to elicit visitors’ preferences, the advent of new transportation and communication technologies, and the rise of new countries as popular tourist destinations offer wide room for innovative research. In particular, investigation on the following four major areas unveils promising opportunities to further reduce the negative impact of transportation on natural resources and recreational experiences, and to take greater advantage of transportation’s potential as a management tool in natural contexts:
s sustainable transportation to natural areas; s sustainable transportation through ICT and ITS; s sustainable transportation in developing countries; s sustainable transportation and ecosystem services.
