13. Sustainable Tourism: Utopia or Necessity? The Role of New Forms of Tourism in the Aegean Islands

Abstract

Tourism is a major activity in the Greek islands. Its development during recent decades has stopped the economic and demographic decline of the area. The paper develops a framework for the appraisal of tourism's sustainability in the Greek islands, and it is concluded that the conventional tourist model, based on sun, sea and sand (3S) has failed to promote sustainability due to the limited economic benefits for host communities and growing environmental pressures. The latest trend in Greece and elsewhere is a shift from mass tourism to more environmentally friendly and sustainable forms of tourism. Policies to change tourism patterns in the Greek islands will need to take into consideration their unique characteristics, their existing realities, and to be based on the exploitation of the local natural and cultural resources in order to develop new forms of tourism. The purpose of this paper is to identify types of new forms of tourism that are being developed in the Aegean Islands, and to evaluate their impact. Various practical examples are presented, together with the difficulties involved in their implementation. The initiatives are in fact so recent that it is difficult to assess their tangible results.

Thirty years after - dramatic change in the coastal marine habitats of Kos Island (Greece), 1981-2013.

“…Tourism pressure indicators for Kos are higher than for Rhodes, one of the most favoured tourist destinations worldwide: the total number of beds km -2 in Kos increased from 14.7 in 1981to 120.18 in 1997and 163.2 in 2012(Spilanis & Vayanni, 2004. The 4,262 bedrooms (52 hotels) registered in 1980 became 13,314 (151 hotels) in 1990 and climbed to approximately 50,000 in 2010 (300 hotels).…”

Implications of tourism development on islets: Ilot Bernaches, Mauritius, as a destination management case study

“…In contrast, despite being part of the tourism package, many islets surrounding islands are inadequately researched. For instance, many tourism studies undertaken in the Aegean and Mediterranean islands (e.g., Andriotis, 2008;Sharpley, 2001;Spilanis & Vayanni, 2003;Sterren, 2007) focus on main islands like Crete, Santorini, Majorca, Malta, Canary, Rhodes, and Paros while islets such as Nea Kameni, Palaia Kameni, Archi, Chalki, Dragonada, and Elassa in the Aegean alone are not investigated. It is thus observed that whenever an islet is under the sovereignty of another land, research conducted on the islet is usually undertaken in conjunction with the mainland.…”

The role of science in sustainability transitions: citizen science, transformative research, and experiences from Samothraki island, Greece

“…Samothraki is a mountainous island of the NE Aegean, Greece (Figure 1), with an area of 178 km 2 and 2,859 permanent residents that are mostly occupied with agriculture (mainly livestock keeping) and seasonal tourism services. Samothraki attracts about 40,000 visitors per year, in a relatively short season (Fischer-Kowalski et al, 2011); with 0.5 tourist beds per inhabitant, it ranks in the lower range of Greek islands (Spilanis & Vayanni, 2004). It has numerous freshwater streams and outstanding natural beauty (Natura 2000, for the most part), as well as significant cultural heritage, and is at the crossroads of development pathways.…”