Where did ecotourism come from?
We helped popularized the term “ecotourism” when the movement was first beginning and The International Ecotourism Society was formed by having GW offer the first training courses in ecotourism management that I am aware of. I remember when we started ecotourism . . . I was working in Egypt and one of the deputy ministers said, “Oh yeah, I have heard about that ‘echotourism’.” She thought it was “echo tourism”—yodeling in the Swiss mountains (laughs). Tourism . . . is the largest ever transfer of wealth from rich to the poorer countries. We are going to be approaching more than 1 billion international travel visits annually over the next three to four years. Ecotourism came out of the national parks and protected areas movement. It wasn’t so much for the direct benefit of communities surrounding the parks and protected areas as a way to find new ways to generate revenue for the parks through admission fees, user fees, etc. Ecotourism has helped increase the revenues for protected areas
