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JOURNAL OF FORESTRY RESEARCH >

2023 , Vol. 34 >Issue 5: 1229 - 1244

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11676-022-01580-4

Original Paper

Impacts of COVID-19 on tourism and management response from Banff National Park, Canada

  • Christina Dehui Geng 1 ,
  • Howie W. Harshaw 2 ,
  • Wanli Wu 1 ,
  • Guangyu Wang 1, d
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  • 1 Department of Forest Resources Management, Faculty of Forestry, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
  • 2 Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
d

Received date: 2022-11-02

  Accepted date: 2022-11-18

  Online published: 2024-10-16

Copyright

© The Author(s) 2023
Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges to the tourism sector globally. We investigated changes in visitor demographics, satisfaction level, and its determinants pre- and peri-COVID-19. Data were collected using questionnaire surveys in 2019 and 2021 within Banff National Park (BNP). The data analyses were based on a sample size of 1183 respondents by conducting factor analysis, correlation analysis and stepwise regression analysis. Results highlight that there were fewer international visitors and more local and domestic visitors during the pandemic. Park attributes were evaluated at a higher satisfaction level peri-COVID-19. The quality of the Park facilities and services were the most important satisfaction determinants pre- and peri-COVID-19, and all the Park COVID-19 measures and actions received positive experience from visitors. This research fills this knowledge gap by developing a better understanding in the change of visitor demographics and satisfaction level in BNP under the context of the pandemic. It also provides implication for both scholars and practitioners to understand the impacts of the pandemic on Park visitation. The study can provide insights for utilizing the pandemic as a transformative strength and for mitigating its negative impact on tourism industry.

Key words： National park; COVID-19 pandemic; Visitor experience; Tourism management; Visitor perception

Cite this article

Christina Dehui Geng , Howie W. Harshaw , Wanli Wu , Guangyu Wang . Impacts of COVID-19 on tourism and management response from Banff National Park, Canada[J]. JOURNAL OF FORESTRY RESEARCH, 2023 , 34(5) : 1229 -1244 . DOI: 10.1007/s11676-022-01580-4

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