Abstract:

Ecotourism, a new term in tourism literature, is defined as an approach that sustains using natural sources while preserving them in the context of ensuring their sustainability and accordingly economic development of local residents by providing them tourism activities while preventing from natural, social and cultural degradation. The comprehension of ecotourism phenomenon plays an important role for tourism students especially for the ones who are going to take part in decision maker positions in the future. The present study is aimed to explore Akdeniz University undergraduate and postgraduate students’ perception of ecotourism and Antalya destination. The questionnaire contains 24 items to measure students’ vacation preferences, their considerations about ecotourism and ecotourism perceptions for Antalya destination. The questionnaire is administered to a total of 227 tourism students, 197 undergraduate, 30 postgraduate. Data gathered from 227 students are tested with specific statistical analyses methods and the results are considered as beneficial for the literature. According to the results, 53.3% of participants define ecotourism as “a tourism that explains nature and teaches it practically” and 47.1% of them define it as “a tourism that includes nature trips and related activities”. It is determined that there is a significant difference between the perceptions of students who have participated in ecotourism activities before and the perception of the ones who haven’t. In addition, the perception mean of the students who have participated in ecotourism activities is higher than the perception mean of the others.

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