Potential for Sustainable Tourism in Japanese Geoparks: Comparison between the Guidelines of the Japanese Sustainable Tourism Standard for Destinations and Self-Validation Sheet of the Japanese Geoparks Committee

Abstract

This study aimed to shed light on how Japanese geoparks contribute to sustainable tourism by comparing the items in the Japanese Sustainable Tourism Standard for Destinations guidelines and one of the self-validation lists created by the Japanese Geoparks Committee. The results showed that Japanese geoparks tended to emphasize management and operation systems, protection and conservation planning, educational activities, advertising, interpretation, and listing of natural heritage sites. This characteristic is a good practice for improving the sustainability of tourist destinations. Meanwhile, Japanese geoparks tended to give less importance to grasp the current situation using objective data and surveys. Therefore, collecting objective data, creating a helpful index, and conducting surveys on sustainable tourism are urgently needed. In addition, geoparks showed weakness in terms of awareness of rights relationships, understanding of natural environments as related to their geology and terrain, and implementation of counterplans for tourism.