Page 105 - World Heritage and Tourism Innovation

Layers of Tourism in Protected Ecosystems

of Slovenia: Trends and Challenges

Anton Gosar
University of Primorska, Slovenia
anton.gosar@guest.arnes.si

The article is a personal view of a geographer about the ongoing relationship be-
tween tourism and nature. The focus is on Slovenia, a European country with di-
verse natural ecosystems. The criteria for the protection of the country’s natural
wealth are presented. Within the EU’s “Nature 2000” framework, 37% of the coun-
try’s surface is defined as exceptional, and 14% of the territory is classified by Slove-
nian law into five protection categories. The tourism industry builds its promotion
through the nation’s natural diversity of the Mediterranean, Alpine, Karst and Pan-
nonian (Danubian) landscapes. Protected areas are under the constant pressure of
visitors and economic restructuring. The challenge for tourism planners and regu-
lators of natural resources is focused on tourist flows numerically, substantively, and
promotionally. After the impoverishment of economic inflow during the SarsCov
pandemic (2019 -) and the desire for a rapid rise of tourism, the fear exists that
tourism industry participants, tourists, and providers of tourist amenities would
bypass the recommended management of nature’s treasures. Therefore, the reasons
for the author’s plea to place significant nature treasures (and culture), like the Tri-
glav National Park (TNP), under international observance, favourably UNESCO, is
documented.
Keywords: human geography; protection of nature; sustainable tourism, Triglav
National Park, Slovenia
https://doi.org/10.26493/978-961-293-417-0.101-114

Introduction ing, caretaking, educating, mobility, socio-political
A Place is Designed to Provide a Living Experience activism and leisure activities (= tourism; recreation)
Like an Experience Attached to the Site. (Maier et al., 1977; Zupančič, 2019; Drozg, 2020;).
Geographers are, by rule, superficial when studying Tourism has lately put many layers on the planet. The
the Earth. We register the phenomenon, discover elites, initially trendsetters, began … and the middle
connections, and monitor the processes that shaped class of the Western to the Eastern society followed.
them. Geographers do not descend into the “guts” of The poorer strata of society were seldom incorporat-
the phenomenon. One of my mentors, professor Sve- ed (except pilgrimages). In Colorado, Professor Nick
tozar Ilešič (1907–1985), concluded that a geographer Helburn (1918–2011), another mentor of mine, a for-
observes the planet from a satellite. He registers traces mer student of the famous cultural geographer Carl
of nature and humans on Earth and files layers they Ortwin Sauer (1890–1975), and an admirer of the na-
have left behind. In times of peace and stability, we ture protectionist John Muir (1838–1914) took us, stu-
individuals change our planet through work, resid- dents, in early November of 1981 to the Rocky Moun-

Proceedings of the 7th UNESCO UNITWIN Conference | 101