The Tourism Service Consumption Model for the Sustainability of the Special Protection Areas

Latvia can be described as a tourist-friendly country. The assumption is based on the statistical data of the ever increasing share of tourism services as a part of the GDP. The tendency of growth of the tourism sector comes with downsides which include an increasing pressure on the territories of special protection area status. The goal of the research is to create a tourism service consumption model that can be used as a tool for sustainable management of the special protection areas (SPAs) while reaching the present and future needs in an efficient way. The model was created with the system modeling software STELLA and based on the acknowledged data of the Slitere National Park tourism resources, the monitoring data from the period of 2009 till 2011, and on the local and international experience and methods for determining the capacity of national parks. When comparing acquired data from software STELLA and Excel, tourism service consumption model validity was ascertained with a result of 0.98 and the credibility – 0.97. The input data is changeable; the platform is lucid and widely usable also in future.