2.3.3. Turizmin Ayak İzi Değerlendirmesi

The purpose of a tourism footprint assessment is to analyze the environmental impacts of tourism development. This evaluation helps you identify potential problems and areas for improvement for your destination. Based on the findings, you can determine the most suitable type of tourism development for your destination and decide whether to continue, modify, or terminate current projects and products. For instance, well-planned tourism brings benefits to the local economy, community, income, equality, nature, wellbeing; while poor planning may have negative impact on natural resources, biodiversity, community infrastructure etc.

To keep track of the potential environmental effects, costs and benefits of tourism development, destinations can use a so-called “footprint matrix”.

For example, through the simple table offered below, you can identify the main challenges that tourism poses on nature, such as threats to local flora and fauna, to local habitats, migration, nesting, breeding and feeding habits. Subsequently, in collaboration with experts, local CSOs and environmentalists, you can design solutions and set targets to address them accordingly.

Similar matrices can be used for identification of potential challenges to water supply, energy use, waste management, etc. By asking crucial questions related, for example, to the main water resources or energy sources for the local population, and how tourism impacts them or may impact them and nature in the future; or the capacity of destinations to safely handle waste from the local population, current and future tourists; or the impact tourism has or may have on construction of facilities and infrastructure etc.; destinations can assess the right direction for their future tourism development projects.