Abstract
Protected areas occupy over 118 million ha (15%) of Australia’s land area and approximately 325 million ha of Australia’s marine jurisdiction. Tourism contributed $87 billion to the Australian economy in 2011-12, with over 3 million international and 24 million domestic visitors interacting with nature and/or visiting natural areas (such as protected areas) as part of their visit. As such, it is imperative to know how many visitors are going to protected areas, who they are, what they are doing, and what their expectations are and have they been met. This seminar describes visitor monitoring systems in Australia including: (i) the systems in place to direct and manage such monitoring; (ii) popular methods for counting visitors and recording patterns of use; (iii) widespread approaches to finding out who visitors are, what they expect, and how satisfied they are; and (iv) how visitor information is stored, managed and used. The seminar concludes with brief comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the current approaches in Australia and lessons learned. In presenting this seminar I will draw on over a decade of research for the Australian Government on visitor monitoring systems in this country.