Factors governing the development of tourism in rainforest regions

Surprisingly, issues related to the systematic development of tourism activity in rainforest areas have been largely ignored in the tourism literature, although it is true that there are a growing number of papers that examine a range of tourism-related issues where the setting happens to be a forest. In one sense, this book builds on Font and Tribe's (2000) book that examined issues related to forest tourism, recreation and environmental management but directs the reader's attention to a wider range of issues associated with rainforests. Essentially this book is an attempt to redress, in a small way, the many gaps in knowledge that currently surround tourism in these wonderful, but in many areas, threatened, ecosystems. To undertake this task, a large team of authors has been assembled to examine rainforest issues using a thematic approach. Many of the authors are from the countries they have examined, giving the book a unique quality. This chapter introduces the need for a systematic study of factors related to understanding opportunities for tourism development in rainforests, builds a model to assist this process and applies this model to a case study based on the Wet Tropics Queensland World Heritage Area (WTQWHA), Australia.