Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
fickle nature of tourism demand must also be taken into account. In
short, futurity as defined by sustainable (tourism) development requires
a predictability of demand growth and flows that cannot be taken for
granted (see Chapter 14).
•
As argued in Chapter 12, research has revealed that the adoption of a
new social paradigm relevant to sustainable living, a fundamental
requirement for sustainable development (IUCN, 1991), is unlikely to
occur. More specifically, the emergence of the 'green' or responsible tour-
ist, frequently cited as the justification for promoting sustainable forms
of tourism, cannot be taken for granted given the characteristics of the
consumption of tourism (Sharpley, 2006).
This is not to say that specific elements of the sustainable development
template are not being addressed to the benefit of resources upon which
tourism depends. For example, many organisations and sectors are imple-
menting policies related to environmental sustainability objectives (see
Chapter 9) whilst there is no doubt that, at the level of the destination, there
are numerous examples of sustainability in practice. However, the broader
principles of sustainable development and most of its development objectives
do not, for the most part, fit easily into the tourism context. One exception,
perhaps, is where tourism development is localised, small-scale, environmen-
tally benign and based upon optimising the benefits to both host communi-
ties and tourists through meaningful, two-way experiences, such as in the
case of so-called community-based tourism projects (Chapter 6). During the
1990s, for example, a number of local rural tourism projects in England were
successfully developed according to sustainable principles although, sup-
porting the argument in Chapter 12, all the projects suffered from a low
level of interest on the part of visitors (Countryside Commission, 1995).
Under such circumstances, greater opportunities may exist for meeting the
objectives of satisfying basic needs and encouraging self-reliance through
community involvement in tourism. However, not only do such small-scale,
site-based developments fail to embrace the wider principles of sustainable
development - for example, the relationship between the destinations or
project with the rest of the tourism system is frequently overlooked - but
also the inevitability, given the inherent weaknesses of the sustainable tour-
ism concept, of the localised site-based perspective serves to amplify the
distinction between 'good', small-scale tourism and traditional, large-scale
or mass tourism.
As a result, despite the UNWTO's assertion, cited fully above, that 'sus-
tainable tourism development . . . practices are applicable to all forms of tour-
ism in all types of destinations, including mass tourism', sustainable tourism
development continues to be associated primarily with local, small-scale
tourism developments. Conversely, large-scale, mass tourism, typified by the
package-tour experience, is seen as unsustainable (Milne, 1998). More
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