Empowering managers: Enhancing the performance of protected area tourism managers in the twenty- fi rst century

• Stephen McCool ^[1] ; Kathryn Khumalo
  1. [1] The University of Montan
• Localización: Tourism recreation research, ISSN 0250-8281, Vol. 40, Nº. 2, 2015, págs. 169-180
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • The role of tourism and visitation in parks and protected areas has accelerated in the past quarter century and will continue to do so, not only because of increased travel activity but also because of the emphasis it receives as a strategy to assist local economic development and as a source of financing for biodiversity protection. Yet, managers are poorly prepared to manage tourism to meet biodiversity and visitor experiences objectives.

    Enhancing professional competencies is an often argued approach for more effective management, but focusing on competencies alone while raising capacity is not suffi cient to improve performance. Here, we suggest managers need greater awareness and opportunity to exercise those competencies and to perform at a higher level. In this paper, we show how insights from women’s empowerment theory can enable male and female managers to respond to complex and dynamic natural resource and tourism challenges by presenting a framework for enhancing awareness and expanding managers power in four dimensions: Power to, Power with, Power within and Power over