Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
4
Sustainability and marketing
for responsible tourism
Jackie Clarke, Rebecca Hawkins and Victoria Waligo
Introduction
Tourism is an amalgam of different interests weaving together both private sector and public
sector organizations and initiatives. It is a criss-cross of sector businesses and organizations
(attractions, accommodation, hospitality, activities, events, aviation, other modes of transport such
as trains, ferries, hire car services etc.), of scales of businesses from the micro-enterprises of
families to the big multinationals, and of levels of destination from local areas of distinctive
character to national countries and cross-border regions. Tourism relies on an integration of
resources, built, natural, cultural and human (as hosts or residents) in a way not paralleled in non-
tourism products, and the costs of these resources are largely not shouldered by its tourists
or users. This fundamental nature of tourism - its intrinsic interdependence and its external
costs - has ensured that sustainability has long been debated and practical action sought through
the lens of different disciplines and stakeholder groups. For example, tourism planners have long
recognised the positive and negative impacts of tourism on the social, physical and economic
systems (see, for example, de Kadt 1979; Mathieson and Wall 1982) and the stakeholder approach
of community-based planning as championed by Murphy (1985).
An appreciation of tourism as perceived by different disciplines enriches the discussion of
the interface between sustainability and marketing for responsible tourism. Tourism has been
criticized for taking too narrow and introverted a view of sustainable development (e.g. Hall,
2005) and marketing has been criticized for being 'functionalist, anthropocentric and consumerist'
in failing to respond to the wider goals of society (Varey 2010: 120). Tourism has been portrayed
as both part problem and part solution, as both vector and victim (United Nations World
Tourism Organization [UNWTO] 2007), in this bigger picture of sustainable development.
This chapter draws on contributions from marketing, tourism studies, tourism marketing,
sustainable development and sustainable marketing (plus other related nomenclatures) and from
the reports of practitioners and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). It cannot be
comprehensive nor delineate the numerous controversies, but draws attention to their existence
within a chapter that seeks to be an introduction to this far reaching and argumentative topic.
Within this proviso, the chapter sets out the language, issues and conceptualization of sustainability
and the reasons for business involvement in responsible tourism before moving on to examine
