Preferences of Prospective Visitors for Nature-Based Recreational Activities in the Salamanca Island Protected Area, Colombia

To develop financially viable, nature-based tourism, in protected areas, park managers need to make decisions as to what outdoor recreational activities should be offered. Using a discrete choice experiment (DCE), we estimate domestic prospective visitors’ willingness to pay (WTP) for a range of recreational activities and identify those with the greatest potential to attract visitors to VA­a Parque Isla de Salamanca, a protected area (PA) in the Barranquilla-Santa Marta region, Colombia. We considered five activities offered by the PA: birding, cultural exchange, nautical sports, walking tours on the beach, and a mangrove boat tour. Results revealed that respondents have strong preferences for cultural exchange activities, while the activities prioritized by PA managers, birding and mangrove boat tours, are the least preferred by respondents. These results suggest that bundling strategies for nature-based tourist products in the PA may be needed to compensate for these unexpected visitor preferences. These results illustrate the usefulness of DCE to inform the design of nature-based tourism strategies in protected areas.