Plan quality and plan detail of visitor and tourism policies in Ontario Provincial Park management plans

Visitor and tourism management is a major component of parks and protected areas. Management plans are important public accountability documents. Research on the policy content of those documents is lacking. This paper uses the concepts of plan quality and plan detail to assess the scale and depth of visitor and tourism policies within park management plans of Ontario Provincial Parks. The research found low levels of plan detail for most of 30 identified areas of visitor and tourism policy in the management plans. However, the overall park organization often had such policies identified in park agency policy documents other than the park plans. The research concludes that these plans are not good plans, due to low levels of plan quality and plan detail, at least in regard to visitor and tourism policies. Suggestions are made on the factors causing this policy void and methods to improve planning practice in the future. The paper provides a method and definitions, with 5 levels of policy detail, which provide more guidance for planners than heretofore available. This research should enable a much more precise definition of policy detail for visitor and tourism policy in plans than has occurred in the literature to date.Management implicationsLegislation and policies provide guidance for visitor and tourism management by a park management agency, but are often weak in providing detail of plan content. This paper shows how an investigation of plan quality and plan detail can provide a new structure to guide such planning.
• A list of 30 management categories provides normative prescriptions for the creation of visitor and tourism policies within park management plans.
• The paper provides a method to improve the level of plan detail of the visitor and tourism components, and thus improve the quality of those plans.
• Use of these methods across a park agency would lead to higher levels of plan coherence and higher levels of transparency and accountability.
• Proper training of planning staff members in the special concerns for outdoor recreation and tourism would be important.