Hiking Model

The second assumption was that access to tourism products was a major factor in tourism
development because accessibility helped the product models best represent development capability
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with existing infrastructure. Access was considered but “was not used to determine capability for a
product, the reason being that access can be provided where needed, and that capability should not be
limited by existing infrastructure. Instead, access was shown on the capability models, where relevant,
as a graphic layer.”38 Basemaps for the products to be modeled were created with existing
infrastructure which was seen as being a first step. These basemaps included roads, rivers, contours,
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coastlines, communities, parks, rail lines, ferry routes, airports, and other features. To help determine
tourism capability existing tourism uses were examined and this included tourism features, services,
and land and water areas which were important to existing operations. This existing tourism use also
included features that had a primary tourism focus like fishing lodges and essential infrastructure such
as roads and airports.40 Lastly, it was assumed that an economic value on the land base could be
determined by merging the individual tourism product capability models to suggest overall capability
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of a region to support tourism.
Data for tourism capability modelling in B.C. was quite diverse with several different forms of
data being integrated to create an output model. The previously mentioned 1:250,000 Tourism
Resource Inventory was the starting point for the digital model process and the data included in it was
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split between the recording of existing tourism uses and identifying tourism capability. The actual
data for tourism capability modelling can be broken into point, line (linear), and polygon coverages.
Point coverages for this model consist of all tourism facilities, infrastructure vital to tourism, and
tourism product use areas too small to be mapped as polygons. Point coverages encompassed
accommodations, small ski hills, marinas, golf courses, small parks, airports, tour operator
headquarters, and communities. Line (linear) coverages were next and were those features that could be
linked to point coverages. These coverages consist of existing infrastructure and tourism features, trails,
rivers, roads, and air and water access routes. Lastly, data was separated into polygon coverages with
tenured and untenured (seasonal) use areas and infrastructure important to tourism. Polygon coverages
are often associated with a point coverage and common polygon coverages created were for fishing
lodge use areas, fishing lakes and rivers, rafting/canoeing/kayaking rivers, large ski hills, parks, large
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communities, and guide outfitter territories.
13
For tourism capability the input data was divided into three categories of coverages going
from capability, to intermediate analysis, to resource coverages. These three categories of coverages
represent the three steps in the tourism capability modelling process within the GIS environment. An
example of one of the individual tourism product models, for marine cruising, is shown below in
figure 5.