Modelling ecotourism potential for Maputaland

We used a multi-criteria decision analysis approach to model ecotourism potential in Maputaland, which involved four key steps: We carried out a literature review to identify factors that influence a landscape’s suitability for ecotourism and validated their relevance to Maputaland through key informant interviews with local ecotourism and conservation experts. Based on this, we identified nine factors within four groups: (A) Landscape – (i) landcover and (ii) natural attractions; (B) Biodiversity – (iii) bird diversity, (iv) mammal diversity, and (v) distance to protected areas; (C) Accessibility – (vi) distance to tarred roads, (vii) distance to non-tarred roads, and (viii) distance to towns; and (D) Socio-Cultural – (ix) cultural attractions. We developed individual ecotourism suitability maps in raster format for the nine factors with a resolution of 25 m. We classified each factor map according to five ecotourism suitability classes from highly suitable (Class 5) to not suitable (Class 1) based on classification scales developed through an expert consultation process. We used an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assign weights to each of the factors. AHP uses a pair-wise comparison matrix based on a nine-point scoring systems to analyse the relative importance of each factor. We asked 49 individuals, who included conservationists, nature explorers, tourism entrepreneurs and tourists, to fill out the comparison matrix and aggregated all of their inputs into a single matrix, which was then used to assign relative weights to each of the factors. We used the weighted overlay tool in QGIS to produce the final ecotourism suitability map for Maputaland, based on aggregating the individual ecotourism suitability maps for each factor and assigning them their relative weights.