Sustaining the ego

Managing tourism decline: insights from the Isle of Man

“…Linear depictions of increasingly developed, degraded, and undesirable destinations, are repeatedly identified (Ayres, 2000, Marwick, 2000, Tsartas, 1992, Wheeler, 1993. Broadly these follow the predictions of the tourism area lifecycle (Butler, 1980), whereby increased development brings increased environmental degradation and eventually undermines tourist attractiveness.…”

“…Tourism development has thus been suggested as inevitably short-termist, an initial route to further economic development, to be moved beyond where possible and perhaps inevitably fated to decline (Agarwal and Brunt, 2006, Arremberri, 2005, Wheeler, 1993. Nonetheless, such linearity of tourism development is increasingly challenged.…”

Putting social impact assessment to the test as a method for implementing responsible tourism practice

“…Whilst recognizing that the imprecision of these concepts has political advantages in that it "allows many different interests to sit at a common table with the potential for exchange of views and, hopefully, learning" (Wall and Mathieson, 2006:292), critics feel that that this imprecision reduces its scientific validity and hampers its application as an analytical and practical tool (Buckley, 2012;Wall and Mathieson, 2006;Wheeller, 1991Wheeller, , 1993.One critic of sustainable tourism is Harold Goodwin, a founder of the responsible tourism approach, who argued that: "sustainable development lacks definition and measurable indicators to determine whether or not tourism is being successfully managed towards sustainability by government. Lip service is paid to the concept: it is used to generate work for consultants and NGOs, to bolster the reputation of companies and governments, but rarely are the outcomes measured or reported … The concept appears to be operative and is often used to secure resources and support, but in practice the principles are not applied, the concept is inoperative, the objectives are not achieved.…”

From theory to practice of ecotourism: major obstacles that stand in the way and best practices that lead to success

“…It is hardly convincing that ecotourists will ever care for anything more than the improvement of their image, their own pleasure and satisfaction. Wheeller (1993aWheeller ( , 1993b) noted that ecotourism should be read as egotourism. He based his philosophy on the idea that people do not really care so much neither for the preservation of the endangered environments nor for what the future generations will be able to see.…”

“…This is not at all surprising when taking into consideration the confusion that exists in ecotourism's definition, concepts and principles and coupled with the fact that it has been misused and misinterpreted so poorly for several decades (Björk, 2000, Wall, 1997) on a practical level. Wheeller (1991;1992a;1992b;1993a;1993b;1996) has been one of the foremost questioners of ecotourism who has seriously considered and carefully examined its concept and development at a deep level, bringing into surface elements that encourage further research. He was one of the first to address the issue that regarding ecotourism, things may not always be as nice and good as they seem, as hidden dangers and traps that cannot be easily seen may exist.…”