Environmental and Cultural Tourism in Nara National Park, Japan

This report discusses the tourism system in Nara National Park, Japan, and the sustainable development strategies and environmental planning techniques applied to preserve its cultural and natural attractions. It highlights the positive and negative impacts of tourism on the environment and socio-economic factors. The report also recommends ways to increase tourism in the park while preserving its ecological balance.

Environmental and Cultural Tourism

Table of Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................1
Discussion.............................................................................................................................................1
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................4
References.............................................................................................................................................5

Introduction
This report talks about one of the destination spot for tourists, that destination is Nara
National Park situated in Japan. Nara National park has gained huge popularity among
tourists in last few years as it is one of the oldest parks in Japan. It has provided shelter to
thousands of deer’s as well as it is famous for the tall statue of Buddha and many temples.
This national park has influenced sustainable development around the world.
Discussion
Tourism system has several aspects it covers tourists from different regions. It
includes destination regions as well as various business and organizations are involved in
delivering the tourism product (Boxell & Wright, 2017). In case of Nara national park
tourists come from different parts of the world, the main feature that have attracted tourist to
this place is deer’s. This place covers popular Sika deer gardens, tea gardens and many
temples. The aim of this National park is to create a place for deer’s where they are protected
and taken care by an appropriate organization under laws. This place is admired by visitors
due to the presence of historical temples, museums and deer’s. Mission of this park is to serve
and maintain the tourist standards, it is also known as ‘Place of Scenic Beauty’. Nara
National park offer various services to tourist like they allow visitors to spend whole day with
deer’s by feeding them with biscuits and there are large yellow trees which allow tourist to
admire the natural beauty (Steve anderson, 2018). Apart from that millions of deer’s roam
freely in the area which is considered as the messenger of god.
The tourists are enhanced towards the environmental factors of national park because they
experience a contributing aspect in the development of park; plus there are many authorities
who pay special attention on cultivating the visitor experience by improving it (Trathan, et.

al, 2015). They improve various things like there is a separate section developed for kids so
that they can play in an artificial jungle to take a live experience of zoo. As tourist are new to
Nara national park so they find difficulty in identification so there are digital sign boards on
the path that elaborates the history as well as provide facts about the place (Yang, 2015). To
engage the audience there are live quizzes so that visitors get an opportunity to exercise their
brains. The park displays the virtual reality of the concepts related to augments that
mesmerize the visitors with the beautiful merge of technology in the park. Tourist interact
with stall keepers in the park as they tell tourist about the behaviour of deer’s in the park and
how they need to be fed. On the other hand visitors motivate them to create a dream park and
suggest ideas for promotions. In the park promotion is done through the digital marketing
tools that offer special discounts for families on the web. They have also designed some
customized routes for loyal customers (Nikolaeva, Bogoliubova & Shirin, 2018).
Additionally branding is done around 5 km radius of the park that is done by using
combination of digital as well as billboards. The branding message is very innovative and
remains active whole day long on the busy streets of the city.
Nara national park is maintained by various authorities with the motive of defining a
sustainable outline for the aspects that will support the decision making procedure for
managing and preserving the environment. Nara national park is under UNESCO, it is the
International Centre specially designed for the Preservation and Renovation of all the cultural
aspects associated with it (Mowforth & Munt, 2015). They also take care of all the economic
factors that ensure nations economic as well as social development. They guarantee that all
the significant environmental degradation is taken into consideration. Additionally, the
imbalanced growth of the park is taken into consideration and they analyse all the risk factors
associated so that proper control is done to remove the negative impact of traditional tourism
(Usui & Funck, 2018). Various sustainable development strategies applied to this national

park are making sure that everything is used within environmental parameters. They ensure to
improve the environmental aspects by respecting the boundaries of the available resources,
environment and biodiversity. Part from that they promote sustainable economy by building
sustainable societies for betterment. In the case of Nara national park there are thousands of
deer and many tourists visiting the park every day, and there is a mess in the park by the
poops of deer everywhere (Usui & Funck, 2018). This is not at all hygienic as the smell of the
poops is grasped across the walking path. Several steps are undertaken by UNESCO to
resolve this issue.
Environmental and sustainable development planning highlights the optimistic effect
of tourism by keeping track of economic as well as non-economic factors. It deals with the
issues in exchanging the preservation of natural and man-made environments (Turner, 2017).
They deploy a platform by sharing their market sector and gaining economic benefits by
tourist. It is true that tourism increases economic benefits of the country but it also have
some adverse environmental and socio consequences. Tourism activities lead to depletion of
natural resources and environment. Once when tourist reaches to the destination taking the
case of Nara national park they create a lot of waste which is thrown in the park itself. Like
while buying the cookies for deer they throw the remaining part here and there which disturb
the ecosystem (Mårtensson & Westerberg, 2016). It was widely researched that not only
uncontrolled tourism expansion leads to degradation but it causes an issue to the
environmental degradation which causes a serious threat to tourism activities.

Figure 1: Climatic changes affect tourism
(Source: Eldoradocountyweather, 2017)
Climatic changes are considered as threats to the national park as the changes in these
factors affect the plants and animals in the parks. In this case animals need to move from one
place to new territory (Hoshu chou, 2010) . The changes in climatic factors means rise in
temperature, or increase/decrease of sea level which leads to difficulty for animals in their
lifestyle.

Conclusion
In this report the case study of Nara national park suited in japan is done. The tourism
system is analysed by knowing the services offered. There are various ways and promoted
used to promote the destination of Nara national park. Nara is one of the lushest clusters for
tourist sites in Japan as it is a destination of world’s best temples, shrines, gardens, museums
and wildlife adventure. Promotion is done so that they get more tourists which would be
beneficial for the country. It relates to the factors used for improving the ecological as well as
socio factors. Various environmental planning techniques and sustainable development
perspectives are applied for the betterment of national park. These national park are
surrounded by geographical regions thus change is climatic conditions have adverse effect on
the life of wildlife and the tourist visiting the place.

Recommendation
To increase tourism in the park occasionally ticket fares could be kept low and some deer
shows must be organised so that more tourism is attracted. Also the fares for the children aging
from 0-6 shall be fixed at half of the price to increase more revenue. Different species of deer can be
kept for attracting more customers.

References
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