Ecotourism Practices, Perspectives, and Consumer Preferences, Attitudes, and Expectations: Post-COVID-19 Review

Tourism is an important socio-economic activity that generates income, employment, investment, and exports, as well as valuable spin-off benefits. However, rapid expansion of conventional mass tourism can have detrimental economic, environmental, and socio-cultural impacts. To address this, alternative forms of sustainable development approaches such as ecotourism and responsible tourism are being adopted by many destinations across the world. Ecotourism has been shown to trigger economic development, environmental conservation, and cultural preservation and revitalization, especially for marginalized remote destinations. The recent global COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the practice of ecotourism and consumer behavior. This chapter investigates environmental trends and tourists’ behavior in the new normal, focusing on ecotourism, responsible tourism, and the environmental traveler. The data was derived from various databases, including Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar, with titles that focus on ecotourism, responsible tourism, environmental travelers, environmental trends, and tourists’ behavior in the new normal. The chapter provides the readership with grounded theoretical and conceptual foundations on emerging environmental trends and how they influence tourists’ behavior toward sustainable ecotourism and responsible tourism development. The literature suggested that further advances in consumer behavior provide great opportunities for the growth of ecotourism and, therefore, focus on developing innovative products and services to meet the travel needs of the emerging new market.