Speleotourism in Slovenia: balancing between mass tourism and geoheritage protection

Abstract

Slovenia is considered as the cradle of karst geotourism as cave tourism started there as early as the Middle Ages. To date more than 12,000 caves were discovered from which 22 have the status of tourist caves. From these, 10 were assessed using the M-GAM model (Modified Geosite Assessment Model) to gain information for better future management strategies. The results show that visitors of Slovenian tourist caves mostly appreciate their natural values, as they prefer caves without major tourism infrastructure and they pay attention to their protection status. The model also confirmed that the two most important tourist caves (Postojna Cave and Škocjan Caves) have the leading geotourism role and that the management of tourist caves via a regional park as is the case of Škocjan Caves is an example of good practice.

Keywords

• geoheritage
• geotourism
• sustainable tourism
• tourist caves
• speleology
• m-gam
• slovenia