Identification and classification of nature-based tourism resources: western Lake Van basin, Turkey

Abstract Today, nature-based tourism is one of the important export items of tourism industry in many countries such as Australia, Kenya, Nepal, and New Zealand. However, the nature-based tourism resources of Turkey cannot be promoted since they have not been identified and classified yet. The aim of this paper is to identify and assess the natural resources having tourism potential to be developed in the western part of Lake Van basin. The increasing environmental awareness among consumers has lead tourism managers and plannners to satisfy this type of tourists’ needs by searching new tourism resources. First step for the effective planning is to systematically determine the resources and assess the values of them. The assessment criteria in this paper are attraction levels, infrastructure, level of environmental degradation, and accessibility. The 23 natural resources in the research area were classified based on Priskin's control list approach by applying several experts’ opinions and making journey to the sites. The places of nature-based tourism attractions were determined with Global Positioning System and this information were evaluated in the Geographic Information System based program of Mapinfo and hundreds of pictures were taken from all perspectives in the research area. The findings of research revealed that the sites have middle and high levels of attraction and low level of infrastructure. In addition to that, the results show that accessibility is not a inhibitory factor for the tourists to reach the destination and the level of degradation is very low in the area. Therefore, a planned research approach is necessary to investigate the areas with high tourism development potential and relatively untouched.