The ever-increasing use of protected areas for a variety of activities has led to a growing concern about the limits of their ecological carrying capacities. Areas of high ecological value, such as national parks and nature reserves, experience ever increasing pressures, from tourism at first place. In addition, new technologies make natural areas more accessible, which leads to extensive ecological impacts and to increasing conflicts between their user groups. In order to manage visitor activities and behaviour, one needs to monitor them and therefore deepen the understanding of their expectations, motivations and overall satisfaction. The MMV conference has made the first step in this direction, when it gathered scholars across disciplines and industry experts in Vienna in 2002, who all made contributions to knowledge and practice from their own perspectives. This event was considered a great success due to its multidisciplinary character, therefore the idea for follow-up conferences was supported and the conference now represents a global forum for exchanging ideas and experiences related to monitoring and management of visitors in recreation and protected areas.

​There were seven previous MMV conferences

• 2002 Vienna, Austria
• 2004 Rovaniemi, Finland
• 2006 Rapperswil, Switzerland
• 2008 Montecatini Terme, Italy
• 2010 Wageningen, The Netherlands
• 2012 Stockholm, Sweden
• 2014 Tallinn, Estonia

Read more on MMV and previous conferences here.

Next 8th Conference on Monitoring and Management of Visitors in Recreation and Protected Areas (MMV) will be held in Novi Sad, Serbia, September 26-30, 2016. The MMV conference provides a forum for presentations and other exchanges of ideas and experiences related to the monitoring and management of visitors in recreation and protected areas. The 8th MMV will focus on the sub-theme “Cooperation across borders and scales” with the emphasis on policies, problems, practices and innovative solutions that connect different areas and regions in order to collaborate on the same focus.

Therefore, we welcome researchers, faculty members, public sector and industry managers, consultants, planners and members of NGO’s dealing with visitor management in recreational and protected areas. The conference is organised around themes of regional cooperation, cross border projects, examples and professional experiences of cross-country protected areas and similar.

Conference will take place in the new Rectorate building at the Campus of the University of Novi Sad. As at the previous MMV conferences there will be some interesting lectures, so far we have keynote speakers coming from Australia, Netherlands, Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia. There will be some interesting conference tours that will be organised in natural and recreative areas in the vicinity of Novi Sad.