Wetland tourism in natural protected areas: Santay Island (Ecuador)

• Tourism and wetlands have a complex and deep relationship.
• Santay Island is a Ramsar Site of International Importance and the homeland of five species of existing mangroves in Ecuador.
• There are three different typologies of visitors.
• The results indicate that tourists found great satisfaction and enjoyed the visit to Santay Island.

The main objective of this paper is the analysis of the relationship between two important factors in the decision making process of a tourist when choosing a destination: motivation and satisfaction. This research is done in a wetland protected area named Santay Island located in Ecuador. The results show evidence that there are two motivational dimensions to visit the place: an Ecological-Hedonic and a Social-Gastronomic motivation. The first dimension is the most important, which is a very common fact in these types of destinations. Both dimensions discriminate each other in the degree of satisfaction perceived by the visitors. The analysis of the motivations allows identifying three different typologies of visitors that are of great importance to segment the market in order to consolidate Santay Island as a wetland ecotourism destination: The eco-social-hedonic tourist, the eco-hedonic tourist and the social tourist. The conclusions highlight the need of considering the motivational profile of the satisfied tourist as managerial instrument to the community of Santay in order to help them obtain better profits, not only economic, but social and cultural benefits.