Critique of Current Thinking in Sustainable Tourism

Value Judgements and the Lacks of Factual Evidence

The key issues in the sustainable tourism debate

Lack of performance indicators

Principle of partnership

Value judgement and lack of factual evidence

Foreign influence in developing countries

Emphasis on the physical environment

The green tourist

Community involvement and local control

De-marketing - places, time, people

Visitor management

Self-contained resort complexes

Concept of carrying capacity

Power without responsibility

Role of public sector planning

Technocratic thinking

Role of industry

Tourist taxes and fair pairing

Tourist education

The ethics and practicalities of conservation

Ecotourism

Private versus public transport

The Concept of Carrying Capacity

Physical capacity- the number of tourisms a place can physically accommodate.


Environmental or Ecological capacity- the number of tourists that can be accommodated before damage begins to be caused to the environment or ecosystem


Economic capacity- the number of tourists that can be welcomed before the local community start to suffer economic problems, e.g. increased housing values and land prices


Social capacity- the number of people beyond which social disruption or irrevocable cultural damage will occur


perceptual capacity- the number of people a place can welcome before the quality of the tourist experience begins to be adversely affected


Infrastructure capacity- the number of tourists that can be accommodated by the destination infrastructure.

De-marketing

prove to be ineffective


  • Many tourist become aware of destinations from sources other than promotional literature produced by the destinations themselves. it includes friends and relatives, the media, the tourist industry such as coach operators

-Repeat visitors are already aware of the destinations


  • Business tourist do not choose their destinations, it is determined by the demands of their jobs, whether it be a visit by a sales person to a potential client or a lecturer attending a specialist conference.

Demand might be reduced

  • raising prices
  • only allowing a certain number of people into the city per day through a ticket system.

Tourist Taxes and Fair Pricing

Develop by two main ways - 1. Charging tourist taxes 2. using the funds generated by taxes to help pay for the maintenance and development of the local tourism infrastructure

Implementing the former approach - 1. to reduce demand at unique destinations require a high tourist tax, 2. reduce a destination's visitor numbers with serious economic costs, 3. the mechanism for implementing the tax would be complex and costly, 4. all tourists are equal in terms of their impact and does not encourage responsible behavior or penalize anti-social behavior, 5. inadequate understanding of carrying capacities , 6. need constantly changing the rate of the tax

The tax has three main problems - as it is largely only collected in hotels, the collection of the tax is often seen as an imposition by the hotelier and as the rate is very low, typically 2-5 francs per person

Visitor Management

Honey-pot areas, and involves initiatives like: 1. using interpretation techniques to try to direct demand to less heavily used areas of the region, 2. closing roads from time to time and/or sitting car parks, so that visitors cannot drive already overcrowded

Private versus Public Transport

  • the private car has been seen as a enemy because there have negative impacts of presence of cars. The reasons why tourist like private car is because tourist enjoy flexibility and freedom, public transport systems are often inconvenient and subsidies for public transport have been declining.

Community Involvement and Local Control

The problem to achieve this aim - 1. communities rarely if ever speak with one piece, 2. the mechanism that are used to elicit the views of the community provide an opportunity for a minority, 3. professionals can sometimes under value or even ignore local views, 4. conflicts that debate causes within communities

  • the power of the tourism industry, central government policies and funding may over-rule local preferences, externally based organizations may already have a strong voice in the area.

The green tourist

  • the consumer boycott of product containing CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons)


  • switching from the use of private cars to public transport for their holiday trip


  • demonstrating against the environmental impacts of new theme parks


  • insisting that hotels recycle waste

The Role of Public Sector Planning

skepticism about state planning and its alleged lack of achievement , the climate of de-regulation and pritization, the dislike of planning in Eastern Europe and the growing power of transnational corporations.

tourism products- accommodation, tour operation, visitor attractions and bar, night clubs