Ecotourism is a subfield and dimension of tourism that was highlighted in the mid of nineties. The current chapter presents a comprehensive model that provides a road map to the local community, tourism experts, destination managers, and tourism companies to achieve continuous growth at their locations. The theoretical model covers the elements of customer satisfaction, and quality of delivered services, and guides how to sustain continuity in revisits. The conceptual framework is segregated into two main streams that originated from ecotourism. This first stream holds the five components that are of primary importance including awareness of visitors, perceived service performance, growth of the tourism industry, tourism infrastructure, and behavioral attention. The next stream contains another five components including environmental concerns, continuity of tourism intention, impact on the lives of the local people, tourism satisfaction, and WOM. Both streams are mandatory elements for the continuity, revisits, retention, and sustainability of particular ecotourist destinations.
TopIntroduction
Tourism is a source of social, economic, and environmental coherence among different casts and cultures (Collins-Kreiner 2010). Tourism is a recreational activity only when it is an element of leisure. If it is planned to be done with any other business activity or with any professional purpose, it loses the component of recreation and does not meet the standards of tourism. McDowall (2010) stated:
“Tourism in the business is the selling of memorable experiences and these experiences are made up of the different products and services that tourists encounter during their travel and stay at a destination”
For many years, human beings have practiced traveling and visiting different locations, which has led them to study attractive scenes, nature’s beauty, creatures, religions, cultures, etc. These practices created harmony and expanded the exposure of learning among people living in various locations. Subsequently, the formation of regions took place and that formation became the standard of an industry commonly known as the tourism industry. Gradual expansion in tourism has opened new avenues and enlightened the path of various dimensions (Richards, 2017). Different regions of this universe have various locations, destinations, and ecotourist points where people across the world travel for recreational purposes. Over time, the tourism sector has steadily spread in various dimensions. Likewise, in the decade of the nineties, ecotourism was explored and integrated with regular tourism. Now, ecotourism has become one of the most attention-seeking domains in the tourism industry, attaining a continuous annual growth rate (Lu & Stepchenkova, 2012; Ngoc et al., 2023). Future success and continuity of success are dependent on a higher growth rate of visitors.
Ecotourism can be defined as: “Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education”. For the promotion of ecotourism, different groups of people who belong to different cultures, customs, and perceptions come close to each other and make a joint memory by sharing their feelings, emotions, and responsible intentions. These things allow people to collaborate harmoniously and the gathered memories of tourists add an element of association, which makes their journey more pleasurable. For the development of ecotourism, local communities play a significant role without sacrificing the comfort of the ecotourists, the local community puts maximum effort into transforming foggy experiences into memorable ones. The local community of Malaysia won the Tourism Award 2014/2015 for delivering apprehensive hotel services where most restaurants were three stars or fewer. Eco-destinations in Jamaica can be discovered throughout the year, but the best month to plan is April. In April, Jamaica was usually not overcrowded. Tourists can take all the benefits of trips at a relatively low cost, even in their peak seasons. Jamaica is full of ecotourist destinations, which is why these destinations are tourists’ priority and attain a good retention rate. Similarly, Portugal is best to visit at any time in the year, but October is more appropriate for executing the destination. Despite this, the autumn season has usually a moderate temperature. On its negative face, Portugal is famous for 300 sunny days per year; therefore, rainy and cloudy days are rare. Tourists need to carry their swimwear to dive into small lakes and be warm enough with a refreshing texture.