Sustaining demand for green tourism
This phenomena has clear implications for the sustained growth in demand for green tourism holidays. With an increasing disconnect between urban consumers in particular and the natural environment and indeed the appreciation of culture and heritage, the sustained demand for green tourism may be legitimately questioned.
Balmford et al. (2009) point out that although there has been some widely publicised statistics indicating a fall in demand for visitors to natural areas (in the US and Japan), which is possibly linked to Pyle’s contentions about changing attitudes in society, this is by no means typical of the international context. Their research found there was no evidence of a consistent decline in demand for nature-based tourism experiences worldwide, with the exception of a few highly developed countries.
It appears as countries develop and experience a rise in affluence, the growth of visitation to nature-based protected areas progressively lowers, eventually falling below zero (Balmford et al. 2009). This contradicts previous evidence and observation (Fletcher 2009) which suggests that ecotourism and green tourism is a preserve of middle-class affluence and so as this grows in Western society, so does/should demand for such holiday experiences.