Sustainable tourism development: the long road from theory to practice.

• Author: Berno, Tracy
• Position: Abstract

Abstract

Predicated on socio-economic changes in the more developed countries, international tourism in less developed countries has become an attractive option for economic development. As international tourism continued to grow however, it became apparent that a range of negative impacts was affected. As a result, sustainable development became a focus for tourism as a development tool. There are several inherent challenges in applying the principles of sustainable development at an operational level in tourism. These include the nature of the tourism industry and product, the fragmented fashion in which critical decisions about tourism are made, and the diverse and often conflicting interests in tourism development held by a broad range of stakeholders. Sustainability under these conditions is an elusive concept and even more of a challenge to implement within the tourism system. This paper considers the pragmatic implications of operationalizing sustainable practices in tourism development vis-a-vis the nature of the tourism industry and product.

Introduction

The post-WWII area saw an unprecedented growth in international tourism. Socio-economic changes in the more developed countries such as higher incomes, better income distribution, longer paid holidays, improvements in transportation technology and a decline in travel costs, provided the means for people to travel in numbers never before realized. Combined with this was a very positive image of tourism development conveyed by the advocacy platform, and the willingness of the World Bank and other institutions to fund tourism projects (Pleumarom, 1994).

International tourism, with its emphasis on the exploitation of 'free' resources (sun, see, sand and friendly people), became an attractive option for economic development for less developed countries (LDCs). Tourism, unlike other development options such as manufacturing, mining, forestry etc., was widely perceived to be a clean and renewable industry. Because it drew upon 'free' natural, historical, social and cultural resources it was thought to be less capital intensive in its requirements for development. Tourism was seen to have potential to be a major driving force for economic development in many LDCs because of its large potential multiplier and spillover effects on the rest of the economy and its generation of jobs for unskilled and semi-skilled workers. For LDCs with limited exploitable natural resource basis in particular, tourism was a viable development option offering an important opportunity for economic diversification (World Tourism Organization & International Hotel and Restaurant Association [WTO & IHRA], 1999). By the early 1970s it became apparent that the 'smokeless industry' of tourism was not as benign as first thought.

As early as 1973, the potential negative impacts of tourism were being considered (see for example Young, 1973). These early critiques of tourism as a development tool focused primarily on the negative socio-cultural impacts (see for example deKadt, 1979), but as international tourism continued to grow exponentially, it became apparent that negative impacts were affected on the environment and economies of LDCs as well. The initial response to these negative impacts involved a series of initiatives undertaken by public sector bodies to attempt to manage tourism through visitor management techniques. These initiatives were designed to ameliorate the worst of the impacts in the short-term. Overall, these were small-scale, localized initiatives that did not attempt to change the nature of tourism as a whole (Swarbrooke, 1999). They were however, the precursors of consideration of sustainable tourism development.

Sustainable Tourism Development

As a result of the global policies set forth in the 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development to the United Nations General Assembly's report "Our Common Future" (otherwise known as the Brundtland Report), and the subsequent United Nations Conference on Environment (popularly known as "The Earth Summit") in 1992, sustainability emerged as a key issue in development. The adoption of Agenda 21 at The Earth Summit further elaborated and expressed the sustainable development approach. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, tourism academics and practitioners also began to consider the implications of sustainable development for their own industry.

Since the Earth Summit, the concept of sustainable development has continued to come under increasing attention from both tourism theorists and practitioners. Its basic premise has received widespread acceptance as a desirable outcome of tourism development. This has been reflected in the proliferation of sustainable tourism development plans, policy statements and guidelines. The World Tourism Organization (WTO) espoused the sustainable approach to tourism, and started to apply sustainable development principles in all of its tourism planning and development (WTO, 1998). The United Nations and its agencies have also addressed the importance of tourism and sustainable development on numerous occasions. In 1997, the General Assembly at its special session to review the implementation of Agenda 21 noted the importance of tourism and requested the development of an action plan specific to tourism development.

Despite the attention given to it, sustainable tourism development has proved to be difficult to define and operationalize. As Harrison (1996; p. 72) stated, "by combining development (inevitably a value laden concept) with sustainability (which is allegedly non-operational and reformist) we thus arrive at the doubly vague concept of sustainable development, only then to focus on one aspect of this dubious process-that of sustainable tourism". The concept of sustainable tourism is variously interpreted as a process of tourism development and/or an outcome of tourism development. This lack of consensus on its meaning and application has led to the suggestion that "defining sustainable development in the context of tourism has become something of a cottage industry in the academic literature of late" (Garrod & Fyall, 1998, p. 199).

This notwithstanding, a range of definitions of sustainable tourism development have been proposed. These definitions generally fall within two categories--those which focus on sustainable tourism as an economic activity, and those which view tourism as an element of wider sustainable development policies (Sharpley, 2000). Although both of these approaches to defining sustainable tourism development have merit, what they fail to do is to build a theoretical link between the concept of sustainable development and the particular context of tourism. There appears to be an unquestioning acceptance that the principles and objectives of sustainable development can be applied to tourism. As a result, several fundamental questions about tourism's role in development in general and the validity of the concept of sustainable tourism in particular, fail to be addressed (Sharpley, 2000). This paper considers the pragmatic implications of operationalizing the principles of sustainable development in relation to the context of tourism.

Tourism--The Industry, the Product and Its Organization

In the past 50 years, tourism has been marked by extraordinary expansion. In 1950 there were 25 million international tourist arrivals recorded. By 1999, the World Tourism Organization (WTO, 2000) estimated that there were in excess of 664 million international tourist arrivals and that international tourism receipts for that year (excluding international fare receipts) reached US$ 455 billion. Tourism is continuing to grow and it is...