Assessing landscape's tourism potential in the Andes foothills

A case study in Melipeuco, La Araucanía Region, Chile

Abstract

In this work, we use the landscape as an element for territory analysis in tourism planning under an ecological approach, in Melipeuco, a place located in the Andes Mountains, in La Araucanía Region. The study area of Melipeuco is an emerging tourist destination, with a significant number of natural attractions such as National Parks and National Reserves (e.g., National Parks of Conguillío and Villarrica, China Muerta National Reserve), volcanoes like Llaima and Sollipulli and, etnocultural attractions related to Mapuche-Pehuenche people. The objective of our work was producing a land-use plan for the biophysical environment, as a rural development strategy for poor communes of the Andean Araucanía, based on the tourism potential. The study area was subdivided into landscape units, using landscape attributes that are closely related with tourism, such as “landscape’s attractiveness", "uniqueness of geological-units" and "naturalness". This analysis made it possible to identify those landscape units with the greatest potential for the development of special interest tourism (SIT). Our results were later verified through field visits and focus group workshops with local tourism entrepreneurs. The territorial analysis revealed that the whole study area possesses all the favorable attributes to develop high-level nature-based special interest tourism. Also, It was found that most of the tourist enterprises are located in the so-called landscape unit "Valle Glacial del Rio Allipén", which is in fact, the one with the lowest potential for SIT (level medium); whilst, the remaining landscape units in the municipality that have a greater concentration of natural tourist attractions and also a greater potential for SIT, tourism is underdeveloped. Therefore, it is expected that soon tourism will expand towards the rest of the municipality.