What is the carrying capacity of a destination?


What is the carrying capacity of a destination? The World Tourism Organization defines carrying capacity as “the maximum number of people that may visit a tourist destination at the same time, without causing destruction of the physical, economic, sociocultural environment and an unacceptable decrease in the quality of visitors' satisfaction” (UNWTO 1981: 4).


What is carrying capacity and how is it calculated?

Carrying capacity is the maximum population that a given area can sustain. The measures commonly used include the number of individuals or the total biomass of a population, which are each highly dependent on differences in physiology and age structure among species and across large taxonomic groups.


What is an example of a carrying capacity?

An example of carrying capacity is the amount of fish a coral reef can sustain. The more food available for the fish, the more the fish that are able to survive on the reef.


What is the social carrying capacity of tourism?

According to the CBA, the SCC of a tourist site can be in general defined as the optimum number of visitors per day to which the maximum social utility due to congestion corresponds. More specifically, in literature the SCC of a tourist area is defined from two different points of view.