Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
for Sustainable Tourism Development
Cevat Tosun, John Fletcher and Alan Fyall
Introduction
other sectors and environments. Although
public authorities, private sector representatives
and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
have recognized, to some extent, the challenges
of sustainable tourism development, necessary
strategies and policy measurements have not yet
been put in place to confront them.
It is assumed that the continuing enlarge-
ment of, and Turkey's eventual accession to the
EU, will have several implications for the tourism
industry in Turkey. While EU enlargement, in
conjunction with global changes in the inter-
national tourism market and consumer prefer-
ences, may bring about new opportunities, it may
also bring with it some negative consequences.
It is thus the main objective of this chapter to
examine tourism development in Turkey in the
context of EU enlargement and accession and
to offer policy recommendations and strategies
to respond to the challenges and opportunities
likely to accrue from such processes.
In view of the above, the structure of this
chapter is as follows. The first two sections dis-
cuss the importance of tourism to the Turkish
economy and the country's principal tourism
resources and attractions by region. The third
section provides a brief account of the likely
impacts both of EU enlargement and of Turkey's
accession on Turkey's tourism industry. The
chapter then provides some preliminary policy
recommendations and strategies for achieving
better forms of tourism development within the
Approaches to tourism development in Turkey
have undergone an evolutionary process reflect-
ing changes in political, economic, cultural and
developmental spheres of policy (Tosun, 2005).
While tourism was seen as a purely economic
growth strategy during the 1960s and 1970s, it
was also a political, diplomatic and socio-cultural
tool to project a more positive image on the inter-
national stage and to ease ideological clashes
among the young (Tosun and Jenkins, 1996;
Tosun and Fyall, 2005).
To achieve the above goals of tourism the
military-led government in 1982 enacted the
Tourism Encouragement Law
No. 2634 to
provide generous monetary, fiscal and other
incentives to tourism entrepreneurs (Tosun,
1999). Consequently, Turkey experienced a rapid
growth of mass tourism in terms of volume
and value during the 1980s and 1990s. This is
reflected in Turkey's current standing in the
global tourism market within the top 15 and top
nine international tourist destinations in terms
of arrivals and receipts respectively (WTO,
2005a, 2005b). However, this rapid growth of
mass tourism development has also ushered in
a number of potentially serious developmental
problems that appear to threaten not only the
sustainable development of tourism, but wider
issues of sustainability because of the negative
'spill-over' effects of the tourism industry into
