The study aims to understand national park visitors’ interests to use tourism services provided in the vicinity of Linnansaari, Seitseminen and Repovesi national parks in Southern Finland. Separate visitor groups were identified based on their use of tourism services and their intention to revisit the area. Data were generated from a questionnaire survey of 736 visitors to the national parks. The analyses revealed five dimensions of interest in tourism services from which five visitor groups were identified: Countryside and outdoor friends, who were interested in recreation services; safari riders, interested in renting snowmobiles and similar services; guided visitors, who were interested in guided tours; room and rental seekers, whose main interest was accommodation and rental services, and uninterested, who had no interest in services. The strongest intentions to revisit the parks and the regions were recorded among “countryside and outdoor friends” and “safari riders”. The results of this study may help tourism enterprises, municipality decision makers and park managers in rural communities surrounding national parks to understand and recognize visitors’ overall needs of tourism services.
nature-based tourism, visitor, visitor segmentation, factor analysis, clustering
In many rural communities, where agriculture and forestry have declined markedly as the principal livelihoods, nature tourism may offer alternative economic opportunities (e. g. Cordell, Bergstrom, & Watson, 1992; Eagles, 2004; Eagles & McCool, 2002; Goodwin & Dilys, 2001; Kauppila, 1999; Saarinen, 2003; Simpson, Pichler, Martin, & Brouwer, 2009). A national park may provide a community with a valuable asset for the development of nature tourism. However, the magnitude of the impact of tourism on the local economy depends on the number of visitors to the national park, their interest in local tourism services and their expenditure on local and regional services and products. In Finland, the estimated economic value of tourism for local economies totals at east 70 million Euros for all 35 national parks combined (Metsä – hallitus, 2009a), which represents an important source of income together with agriculture and forestry in many municipalities. This study focuses on the interest of park visitors to use tourism services in the rural communities around three national parks in Southern Finland where tourism is not a major industry, as it is in the northern part of the country.
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