[O-04] Geoparks in Japan

[O04-P19] Current status and the direction of Geotourism: A case study at the San’in Kaigan UNESCO Global Geopark

*Masato Tokuda¹, Noritaka Matsubara¹, Tohru Sakiyama¹, Hiroo Inokuchi¹ (1.Graduate School Of Regional Resource Management, University Of Hyogo)

Keywords:San'in Kaigan UNESCO Geopark, Geotourism, Tourist Satisfaction, Geopark Guides, Outdoor Activities

Sustainable development of the region, by preserving the natural heritage, take advantage of education and dissemination and tourism is important for geoparks. Tourism is possibly the one of effective tools for sustainable development in geopark area. By quantitative research in the trend of geotourism in geopark, we analyzed web trend analysis and investigated questionnaire and interviews, to visitors and verified the validity of the geopark guides and outdoor activity providers. We obtained several important results of these investigation, became clear that a) Interest of tourists are a beautiful landscape and outdoor activities, in most case. A result of questionnaire survey, became clear that b) Tourists who used a guide, got satisfaction more than the tourists who didn’t use a guide. Same tendency is obtained for the outdoor activity. From the above, we concluded that the points in the tourism in Geopark is beautiful landscape, outdoor activities and guide. On the other hand, activity providers does not think about importance of guidance in outdoor activities tended to not feel the satisfaction for tourist of the guide, in some cases. Geopark guides does not think about the satisfaction of the tourist of the in extraordinary experience and refresh of the tourist. We suggest the importance of the network creation in the Geopark with the guides and outdoor activity providers, and also other persons who concern about geoparks.