Does Sustainable Tourism Development Enhance Destination Prosperity?

Abstract

Prosperity is one of the five critical areas for Sustainable Development according to the 2030 Agenda. This research develops a prosperity model for a tourism destination and examines stakeholders’ perception of the role of sustainable tourism development in enhancing the prosperity. A set of 18 sustainability indicators were used and identified through a hybrid model that combines results from a systematic literature search and four-stage convergent interviews. Results from 171 participants from five different groups of stakeholders revealed that sustainable tourism development enhances the prosperity of the target destination in general. Sustainability was found to be a medium to strong predictor of key prosperity dimensions, particularly environmental quality and sociocultural empowerment. Finally, the level of relationships were quantified to assist destination managers in identifying where to expend effort and resources to improve the implementation of sustainable tourism while considering the key dimensions of prosperity.

Sustainable Tourism Policy, Destination Management and Sustainable Tourism Development: A Moderated-Mediation Model

“…Therefore, a tourismreliant economy should develop sustainable tourism to meet residents' needs. Falatoonitoosi et al [82] revealed that STD positively links to environmental quality, sociocultural empowerment, economic growth, quality of life, and tourist satisfaction. STD provides better tourism experience and promotes tourist-resident cooperation.…”

What if the local community is already well-off enough? Stakeholders’ conflicts over sustainable tourism development in remote communities

“…In practice, the economic dimension has received more consideration from decision makers (Elgammal, 2009; Weaver, 2009) due to its obvious outcomes related to reducing poverty, and generating income and job opportunities (Abdelaziz et al , 2021; Shafaei et al , 2015). Socially, STD contributes to residents’ quality of life, in parallel to creating job opportunities while providing high-quality experiences for visitors (Hall and Lew, 1998; Falatoonitoosi et al , 2021; Mathew and Nimmi, 2021). Interestingly, some locally owned businesses implement more sustainable practices than they report or communicate to other stakeholders, which has been termed “greenhushing” (Font et al , 2017), and this leads to an underestimation of the community’s ability to implement STD.…”

“…local communities) (Elgammal, 2009). More recent studies have developed additional STD models to explore stakeholders’ perceptions of the relationship between STD and the general enhancement of destination prosperity; findings revealed the strength of such a relationship (Falatoonitoosi et al , 2021).…”

“…Hence, there have been calls for a greater focus on the practices and implementation of STDs to widen the current understanding of the concept (Farsari et al , 2011; Waligo et al , 2013; Bramwell and Lane, 2014). In the same vein, STD implementation is enhanced by a deeper understanding of the development and destination context (Moyle et al , 2014), the good management of stakeholder groups, based on their priorities (Elgammal, 2009) and stakeholders’ involvement to maximize community well-being and destination prosperity (Falatoonitoosi et al , 2021; Mathew and Nimmi, 2021). While stakeholder involvement in STD has been widely explored (de Nisco et al , 2008; Getz and Timur, 2012; Golestaneh et al , 2021), the actual stakeholders’ engagement can be meaningful only if all stakeholder groups reach a holistic understanding of STD goals and their impacts on individual lives (Wray, 2011).…”

Hacia un modelo de ecosistema sostenible

“…Además, a través de su consumo individual y por medio de diferentes asociaciones participan e intervienen en la gestión turística para lograr actuaciones empresariales más sostenibles y para lograr normas, estrategias y políticas más proteccionistas del entorno natural y social (Menconi et al, 2017) y, así, mejorar su calidad de vida. Además, al hacerlo no solo aumenta la calidad de vida local, sino también la satisfacción del turista y la prosperidad local (Mathew y Sreejesh, 2017;Falatoonitoosi et al, 2021). En este sentido, la comunidad local apoya el desarrollo de un turismo sostenible al ser percibido como una forma de turismo que ayuda a preservar los recursos naturales y que actúa como herramienta del desarrollo social local.…”