Introduction - Tourism and Trails: Cultural, Ecological and Management Issues - page 9

cemeteries, churches, waterfalls, monuments and archeological sites. The
compact nature of points provides more efficient opportunities for the 'com-
mercial exploitation' of tourists, and some of the negative impacts associated
with tourism can be limited to small areas. Nonetheless, such areas may face
the danger of being over-commercialized and overcrowded, which can at
peak times diminish the quality of the visitor experience and result in envi-
ronmental degradation.
National parks, small towns and historic cities, resort communities and
wilderness zones are common examples of area attractions. This type of
attraction might comprise several point attractions, such as scenic overlooks,
waterfalls, campgrounds and historic buildings, which together become nodes
in a larger attraction system. This resembles closely what Leiper (1990) called
'clustered nuclei', where tourists gather in certain areas because of the nucleic
clusters of unifying themes. While areas might also attract large numbers of
tourists, owing to their larger spatial extent, they can encourage a wider dis-
persion of visitors, thereby spreading commercial development and tour-
ist expenditures to more locations and diluting the negative impacts of heavy
levels of visitation. Nonetheless, they, too, can experience extremely crow-
ded conditions during high season. In many US national parks, such as
Yellowstone, Zion, Grand Canyon and Great Smoky Mountains, excessive car
traffic can make navigating park roads and car parks very difficult during the
summer months (Sims et al. , 2005). Wall (1997) suggests that some areas are
so large and dispersed that it might be necessary to create concentrations of
services that will enable visitors to be monitored, catered to and counted. This
often takes place at gateways, interpretive centers and commercial clusters.
The final spatial type of attraction noted by Wall is of most concern in
this topic, although all three categories are important in the context of small-
and large-scale routes and trails. Wall (1997: 241) defines linear tourism
resources as those with physical linear properties and those which guide visi-
tors along a specific path. These include rivers, lakeshores, coastlines, other
rectilinear landforms, trails, highways and scenic routes. In these cases, visi-
tors converge along narrow strips of land or transportation corridors. While
users might be concentrated along linear attractions, they are more dispersed
than at point attractions. Wall (1997: 241-242) suggests that from a mone-
tary perspective, visitor concentrations may still be ample enough to attract
substantial commercial development, which can have negative implications,
such as overdeveloped coastlines, polluted rivers and byways cluttered with
billboard advertisements. In some cases, scenic corridors are so crowded with
buildings, pedestrians and car traffic that it is difficult to catch a glimpse of
the natural or cultural landscape that was the primary appeal of the area.
Scale is a critical concept for understanding tourist attractions, destina-
tions and tourism planning and development (Shackley, 2003). Different scales
or sizes of routes and trails will have different management implications and
conservation challenges. This spatial dimension is a crucial element of Lew's