Innovation for sustainable urban tourism: some thoughts on best practice

Abstract

This paper examines a series of strategic initiatives that have been undertaken by Tourism Queensland (TQ), a State Tourism Organization in Australia, to develop tourism and in particular to develop networks in tourism destinations. This paper firstly examines the nature of sustainable urban tourism (SUT) and discusses approaches to defining it. It suggests that developing SUT requires a generic approach to improving sustainable tourism operations amongst all suppliers in an urban area. Further, this approach suggests that best practice in marketing and policy development can be adopted to attract tourists to a SUT destination and examples of this approach are provided.Inovação para o turismo urbano sustentável: algumas reflexões sobre as melhores práticas Este artigo analisa uma série de iniciativas estratégicas que têm sido desenvolvidas pelo Turismo de Queensland (TQ), uma organização estatal de turismo, na Austrá- Este artigo, em primeiro lugar, examina a natureza do turismo urbano sustentável (SUT) e discute as abordagens para defini-la. Sugere que o desenvolvimento SUT requer uma abordagem genérica para melhorar as operações de turismo sustentável, entre todos os fornecedores em uma área urbana. Além disso, sugere que as melhores práticas em marketing e desenvolvimento de políticas podem ser adotadas para atrair os turistas para um destino SUT e são fornecidos exemplos dessa abordagem.

The Discourse on Sustainable Urban Tourism: The Need for Discussing More Than Overtourism

“…Scott and Cooper [39] address the overarching question of whether one should develop sustainable urban tourism, arguing that this first needs to be recognized as a wicked question, involving tradeoffs between competing priorities. As the question of developing sustainable tourism is a normative question, it depends on the values of the stakeholders addressing it, which usually is a network of actors who debate, decide and implement tourism related strategies and policies.…”

“…A major difficulty with the governance of sustainable tourism is that it spans diverse policy domains, leading to decisions affecting sustainable tourism being made in other policy domains, with little or no attention paid to how tourism may be affected by such decisions [39]. Further, research suggests that tourism policy often is opportunistic, with expanding tourism high up on tourism strategies securing increased revenue and employment [40].…”

Assumptions for a Successful Implementation of the Concept of Sustainable Tourism Development: Example of Urban Destinations of the Republic of Croatia

“…The existence of a multi-stakeholder network in the destination is a prerequisite for an effective management of sustainable destination development (Byrd, 2007;Timur and Getz, 2008;Scott and Cooper, 2010). The network represents a structure defined by the combination of roles and interdependence of network members.…”

“…Additional benefits include more efficient management of resources and infrastructure, and the creation of tourist products for the satisfaction of tourists as well as for the socio-economic progress and the preservation of the environment (European Commission, 2000). Scott and Cooper (2010) point out that it is necessary to remove hierarchical, geographical and functional boundaries to create an effective development network and to share information among stakeholders. The main step in networking is the identification of stakeholders and their inclusion in the network (Hardy and Beeton, 2001).…”

“…Takvo poslovanje zahtijeva integraciju načela održivog razvoja od strane upravljačkih struktura i drugih dionika iz kojih će slijediti the importance of the state and its sustainable development policy, which should be able to balance between the policies of all stakeholders. Additionally, it is seen a growing role of certain key members who together or within the public sector create a critical mass for undertaking and implementing the goals of sustainable tourism development (Scott and Cooper, 2010). Bramwell andLane (2010, 2011) also emphasize that local governments linked with higher governance levels should take over a more prominent role in assuring sustainable tourism.…”