Abstract
In most European countries, visitor monitoring is a well-established tool for protected areas management. Increasingly, the management of protected areas in the Czech Republic has led to a growing demand for high-quality data on visitors.
There exists a wide variety of methods of visitor monitoring, but the most frequently applied ones in the Czech Republic are the automatic and personal counting - usually ignoring other alternatives. The study presents a systematization of visitor monitoring methods employed in the Czech and foreign protected areas, together with a discussion on the survey purposes, strengths and weaknesses of the data collected using particular methods.
The aim of the study is to increase the portfolio of considered visitor monitoring options in the Czech setting. We hope to enhance the discussion on the application of monitoring methods and conditions under which they allow to produce high-quality data and to show which method may prove useful in each specific monitoring task, considering the characteristics of the protected area, visitor population and the purpose of the survey.