Drylands and tourism and recreation

Brief overview

Drylands can be popular tourist destinations. People may travel to drylands to view specific plants and animals such as endemic species that have special adaptations to these variable environments. Drylands exhibit unique landscape features such as rocky mesas and dramatic sunsets that attract rock-hounds and photographers. Some recreationists rely on drylands for hiking and camping, others may regard specific dryland sites as culturally and spiritually important.

Map description

What are some specific tourist attractions in drylands? Map 39 plots selected tourist attractions – by region and dryland countries. This map is not comprehensive but helps to provide context for the following discussions.

To develop a rough estimation of trends in tourism within drylands, we summarized data from countries that are predominantly dryland – countries with at least 90 percent of their land area considered dryland. The World Tourism Organization (WTO) and the World Bank provide data on the number of international tourists and the amount of international tourism receipts for various countries around the world. The data are collected primarily from questionnaires sent to government offices and supplemented with published data from other official sources. The number of international inbound tourists is the number of visitors traveling to a foreign country for purposes other than business. These data refer to the number of visitors arriving rather than the number of persons traveling. Thus, a visitor making several trips to a country during a given period is counted each time as a new arrival. International visitors include tourists (overnight visitors), same-day visitors, cruise passengers, and crew members. These receipts include any other prepayment for goods or services received in the country being visited. The share of receipts in exports is calculated as a ratio of goods and services to exports. Although progress has been made in harmonizing definitions and measurement units for these data, differences in practices of data collection and reporting among countries still prevent full international comparability.

Of the 14 predominantly dryland countries (with data available), 10 experienced an increase in the number of international tourists between 1990 and 2000. Iran