Accommodation, Seasonality and Domestic Tourism to National Parks: Implications for Environmental Policy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an interesting and valuable paper that considers the impact of seasonality on visitor choices and perceptions and the resultant implications concerning the environment. I think that if the authors provide additional clarifications on a variety of points, the paper will be a good candidate for publication in the journal.

The author should make it clear in the abstract that the focus is on the Canary Islands and the small island destination context.

Choosing an area with a low impact of seasonality is an interesting choice for this particular paper. Hence, I think that more detail needs to be provided either in the background or discussion sections. For example, I am curious about the differences in costs between high and low seasons. How much influence would this have on resident and non-resident choices of accommodations? On a similar vein, how easy is it for non-residents visiting in the high season to use the less damaging forms of accommodation such as camping (which presumably involves renting a tent or van) or staying at guest houses (such as Airbnb) or sleeping in the park?

I would welcome some background on the designation and management of national parks in Spain. There is a wide array of government approaches to national parks, including differences in ownership and permissible land usage; tourist perceptions of environmental preservation may be influenced by the level of protection expected of a national park in the country.

Excellent, succinct summary of the overall issues associated with seasonality.

I like what they have written in the “Tourism in small islands” section, but I think there needs to be a bit more explanation here of the distinctive circumstances of tourism on a small island. There are distinct factors that affect both environmental impacts and visitor choices that warrant further discussion.

The objectives and research questions are clearly explained, and the choice of methods is highly appropriate. Overall, the authors have done a nice job of explaining the analysis. However, they need to provide more details concerning the administration of the survey. Specifically, how/when were participants approached? It would also be helpful to know the demographics of those that filled out the survey and, if possible, how they relate to the typical tourists expected in the Canary Islands.

Further explanation is needed concerning why camping and cruising are in the same category of accommodation. Cruise ships are notorious air polluters, whereas some forms of camping produce comparatively little.

Is there any data available on hotels in the studied area concerning age? Are many or most of the hotels of new construction? Are there any differences between the parks in this regard? Are there hotels that have been created from adaptive reuse of building? This seems a significant consideration when new construction is the main measure of environmental impact being used in the article.

Good discussion of changes in visitation to the Canary Islands and carrying capacity.

Nice use of Tables to summarize important findings in the results.

Authors have misstated from lines 509-511; infer they mean “changing from High to Low”

I would like to see more discussion at the end of the paper that connects the findings with the recommended policy changes. While I agree with their arguments, these do not automatically follow from the findings of their survey. What factors may explain their findings and how do they relate to their suggestions?

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Reviewer 2 Report

The submitted manuscript is devoted to the important topic of the stress of tourism infrastructure, concretely accommodation facilities, on the destination environment as a living place of local people. The presented research consists in the analysis of the relation between the place of residence of tourists and seasonality on one side and accommodation type and perception of nature protection importance on the other side, all that in the national parks in the Canary Islands (Spain).  The intention behind is to examine if the seasonality or place of residence (domestic / foreign) domestic tourists.

However, the methodology needs to be precised as well as the conclusion. It is not evident, how the presented results contribute to the theory building or testing. Thus, the manuscript needs major revision.

The main problems are:

1. Introduction section:

• In some sentences, it is not clear which statement applies to small islands and national parks in general and which ones specifically to the destination of the Canary Islands.
• The statement ” The relationship between tourism and the environment can be described as symbiotic.” apparently should be “The relationship between sustainable tourism and the environment can be described as symbiotic.”
• The statement ”… can lead to levels of entropy…” is rather inaccurate, while the large accommodation complexes with huge environmental impacts can be highly ordered and thus have a low level of entropy (this statement is not based on the proved correlation between entropy of tourism development and its sustainability). It is recommended to use different wording.
• Dealing with seasonality theoretically, the Skewness and Kurtosis indices should be mentioned. The statement ”… Therefore, looking for a real balance in the number of tourists coming each month throughout the year should be a tourism policy target.” should be reconsidered, while this hypothetical situation would not be optimal (it would be unnatural), there is need for some recovery (destination area is not factory).
• The statement ”Tourism to islands is second only to historical cities when it comes to visitation levels” should be precised, to be clear if it is about per capita visitation (sustainability standpoint).

2. Methodology section:

• The conceptual and theoretical background of the research should be enhanced. Brief introduction of theories (environmental economy, cognitive anthropology, behavioural psychology or what?) and theoretical concepts (tragedy of commons, DPSIR, push/pull motivation or what?), on which the research is based, has to be provided there.
• The aim of the study should be clearly formulated there – which kind of theoretical contribution it is going to bring?
• Regarding the qualitative research strategy, research hypothesis is missing there. Which kind of expectation / prediction was tested by research?
• The process of data collection should be described in detail to allow other researches to repeat it in their own research (distribution logistic, communication language etc.).
• The map of the CI should be provided with the researched NP indicated in it.
• The description (definition) of the researched types of the accommodation facilities is necessary (e.g. it is not totally clear what is meant by own house – second house?, which category includes B & B, etc.) Illustrative photos of these types of the accommodation facilities would be also useful.
• It should be also elucidated if all the three authors were during these four years of the research working together or the research team changed during the years.

3. Results section:

• In this section, it would be very useful to bring some details to the complementarity of the local accommodation facilities to the local life (the level in which they are shared with local people, which is evidently essential for its environmental impact and whole tourism sustainability. It means, to express how deep problem it would (hypothetically) for these accommodation providers to survive without tourism.
• 3.2.1 should be renamed to “Tourism intensity”, while there is not nothing about carrying capacity.

4. Discussion & Conclusion section:

• It should clearly state, how the presented results contribute to the theory building or testing. The present Conclusion brings rather trivial observations, the contribution of research results to the tourism studies as well as proposal of some topics or approaches to the related future research should be clearly expressed. It should also bring some reasoning and mainly result hypothesis verification.
• The formulations with recommendations for practice (management) are really trivial, they could be written without any research.

5. Some technical and formal notes:

• Terminology: It is recommendable to use “domestic visitors” instead of “residents” to differentiate them from the island's inhabitants.
• the abbreviation "CNT" on page 9 and page 10 should be probably corrected to "CNP"
• in chapter titles, nouns should be written in capital letters
• the superscript for square km (km²) has to be used consistently
• the axes of graphs should be described, what is plotted on them as variables, values (Figure 6 and Figure 7)
• for description of authors’ contributions, the initials of their names should be used

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment. 

Author Response File: Author Response.doc

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I commend the authors for completing a substantive and meaningful revision in such a brief time. The authors have admirably addressed my concerns from the first draft of their paper. I would still like a bit more explanation of the survey method; specifically, how were participants chosen and approached. Once that has been addressed, the paper will be suitable for publication.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your very kind and positive feedback comments. We have added some additional material as suggested on page 7, lines 308-329, which explains the survey method and data collection details in more depth. All new material is highlighted in bold blue. 

Reviewer 2 Report

Congratulations, the revised manuscript has improved substantially, I think it could be published now.

Author Response

Thank you for your very kind comments, we worked hard to ensure all items raised were met and are pleased that you appreciated our efforts.