Survey Says: Canada's Great

Source: AOL.ca

Posted: 10/28/09 11:47AM

Filed Under: Canada Travel Guide

In a ranking of the world's best places for 'destination stewardship', Canada's Kootenay/Yoho National Parks and the Gaspe Peninsula trailed only Norway's Fjords region as tops in the world.

Conducted by the National Geographic Society's Center for Sustainable Destinations, the survey is an assessment of authenticity and stewardship, as defined by a large panel of experts.

On their methodology page, the Society likens their approach to the scores given out by Olympic judges reflecting "both measurable factors and intangibles (style, aesthetics, culture)". This year they contacted about 437 experts in relevant fields, like geography, sustainable tourism, historic preservation, travel writing and site management and ecology, and asked them to rate the places they know. As a general rule, when people care about the condition of a place, its score tends to go up and stay there. But when a particular destination is seen as a tourism cash cow, scores tend to fall. In this category Canada does come in for a low score, for the shared Alaska/BC Inside Passage, which joins places like Ha Long Bay and The Grenadines, both of which have fallen precipitously since the annual survey began six years ago.

The Top 10, in order: Fjords Region, Norway (85 points) Kootenay/Yoho National Parks, British Columbia (81 points) Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec (80 points) South Island, New Zealand (80 points) Ancient Kyoto, Japan (79 points) Vermont, U.S. (78 points) Slovenia (78 points) Kakadu National Park, Australia (78 points) Medieval Granada and the Alhambra, Spain (78 points) Bavarian Alps, Germany (77 points)

Lowest Ranking Places: Northern Red Sea Coast, Egypt (41 points) North Coast, Dominican Republic (41 points) St. Maarten/St. Martin (38 points) Cabo San Lucas Region, Mexico (37 points) Grand Bahama, Bahamas (35 points) West Bank, Bethlehem, Israel/Palestine (34 points) Costa del Sol, Spain (31 points)