Sustainable Tourism Innovation: Challenging Basic Assumptions

Abstract

KEYWORDS: sustainable development , sus tain able tourism , innovation , regional development Tourism and Hospitality Research (2008) 8, 4 -13.

There Is No Such Thing as Sustainable Tourism: Re-Conceptualizing Tourism as a Tool for Sustainability

“…In some cases there is an opportunity for some input from the destination community into the development of the plans themselves. Other critical reviews of tourism planning processes and development policies by Hall [33] and Ruhanen [34] provide consistent conclusions to those described by Moscardo [8,11]. These critiques further argue that, despite the addition of sustainable tourism as a goal in many plans and increased attention paid to environmental impacts of tourism, this traditional approach to tourism planning remains largely unchanged and thus is unlikely to improve the sustainability of tourism.…”

“…What is of most relevance to this special issue and the present paper are the critiques of its formulation. Five main issues with regard to ST have been identified-it is tourism or tourist-centric, it is focused on the destination space and ignores the larger global system that tourism is a part of, it highlights environmental concerns and often ignores other dimensions of sustainability, it is usually driven by academics and institutions that present sustainability as an objective, scientific concept best achieved by the development and enforcement of rules and guidelines for specific practice, and it is not integrated into other activities [5][6][7][8][9][10].…”

“…These gaps in ST are partly the result of the fourth problem; the dominance of external experts in the development of ST rules, guidelines and standards which assume a shared objective scientific view of sustainability. This framing of ST further disempowers other stakeholders, especially local residents [7][8][9][10], ignores the value-laden, subjective, cultural nature of sustainability, and thus fails to address the justice issues that are critical to understanding the origins of unsustainability [4,6,7].…”

“…Such a pre-implementation assessment would more directly consider tourism as one possible tool for achieving sustainability and examine its value as a means to an end, rather than an end itself. Thus proposed tourism projects would be assessed according to the resources that they would provide for use by residents, the assets that would be enhanced and the opportunities that would be provided for other commercial, social and cultural activities [8].…”

The Tourist Model in the Collaborative Economy: A Modern Approach

“…One year after the International Tourism Organisation extended the concept to tourism, defining tourist development capable of satisfying the demands of today's tourists and of the relative welcoming regions, allowing for an increasing the opportunities for the future as sustainable (Cater & Lowman, 1994;Perkins & Brown, 2012;Fiorello & Bo, 2012;Saayman, Rossouw, & Saayman, 2012;Baral, Stern & Hammett, 2012;Jamrozy, 2007;Nicely & Palakurthi, 2012;Shikida, Yoda, Kino, & Morishige, 2010;Kennett-Hensel, Sneath, & Hensel, 2010;Zeppel, 2010;Moscardo, 2008;Billington, Carter, & Kayamba, 2008;Giannoni, 2009;Benevolo, 2011;Pencarelli & Splendiani, 2010;Ritchie & Crouch, 2000;Ruozi, 2005). "Therefore, sustainable tourist development attempts to balance out the economic repercussions of tourism with the preservation of the irreproducible resources involved in the production of tourism, the environment and the culture of local communities in primis.…”