Principles and Concepts to Achieve Successful Ecotourism

Tourism is now one of the most important economic, social and cultural issues. Development of ecotourism as one of the most attractive type of tourism could have had remarkable environmental impacts in addition to its economic, social and cultural effects. These effects would have had destructive impacts on many aspects of human and natural environment if not carefully considered, and do not develop preventive measures in the form of guidelines, standards and continuous evaluations and would have caused instability in environment and consequently in ecotourism. However, ecotourism as an appropriate tool could have had a global or regional role in sustainable tourism. Unfortunately, ecotourism now is not properly managed and is defined in a way that is far from the standards which are discussed in this paper to achieve sustainable success. For example, community participation and satisfaction of native people in tourism activities is one of the necessities to achieve the goals of sustainable tourism. On the other hand, adopted tourism policies not only should have pay attention to the marketing and the number of visitors but also should considered to the visitors experience quality and the region integrity. The purpose of this article is to explain, interpret and differentiate the concepts of tourism and ecotourism and develop some of the required principles and policies to achieve the sustainable tourism using ecotourism.