The Evaluation of Tourist Resources: an Applied Methodology

Abstract

The complex of attractions of an area forms its tourist resource base and is often neglected or taken for granted in tourist studies. A new, original methodology assesses the tourist potential of such a resource base by taking in consideration the balance between tourist demand, expressed by visitors' preferences, and tourist supply, evaluated on the basis of criteria common to any tourist attraction. The method was originally applied to the southern region of Africa and, from the resulting map of local distribution of tourist values, a set of 20 main tourist regions was identified.