World Heritage or national park? Visitor preference for protected area brands in Queensland, Australia

Protected area categories such as national park and World Heritage have become internationally recognized brand names with impressive powers of attracting visitors to particular sites. This paper explores visitor preference between the World Heritage brand and the national parks brands in Queensland, Australia based on a study conducted across six Australian national parks over a four month period in 2008. 1,827 self-completing visitor questionnaires were collected from six national parks also carrying the World Heritage brand. Findings clearly show that the national park brand is better recognized by visitors and preferred over the World Heritage brand. There are significant opportunities for future investigation into protected area brands.