Tourism, cities and the environment in the Asian century

The remote West Kimberley region in Western Australia presents a unique nature based tourism destination. Portrayed as one of the world’s last wildernesses, the region offers stunning natural landscapes, unparalleled nature-based experiences and a vibrant historic as well as contemporary Indigenous culture. Despite this there has been virtually no research into how the West Kimberley is valued by tourists, and spatially explicit investigations are lacking. State marine protected area planning, currently in a formative stage in the region, requires such spatially explicit social data to complement existing biophysical information. This paper reports on research with 42 tourists undertaken as part of a broader research project into socio-cultural values of the Kimberley coast. Analysis identified 16 key values associated with the West Kimberley coast, including aesthetics, recreation, therapeutic, physical landscape, Aboriginal cultural values, social values, learning and research, economic, subsistence , experiential, historical, spiritual, biodiversity, future bequest and existence. By highlighting values of importance to tourists and thus those requiring management attention, this research makes an important contribution to marine spatial planning in the West Kimberley