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SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
Sustainable tourism is tourism attempting to make as low impact on the environment and local culture as possible, while helping to generate future employment for local people. The aim of sustainable tourism is to ensure that development brings a positive experience for local people, tourism companies and the tourists themselves. Sustainable tourism is not the same as ecotourism.
OVERVIEW
Global economists forecast continuing international tourism growth, ranging between and 6 percent annually, depending on the location. As one of the world's largest and fastest growing industries, this continuous growth will place great stress on remaining biologically diverse habitats and indigenous cultures, which are often used to support mass tourism. Tourists who promote sustainable tourism are sensitive to these dangers and seek to protect tourist destinations, and to protect tourism as an industry. Sustainable tourists can reduce the impact of tourism in many ways:
1) informing themselves of the culture, politics, and economy of the communities visited
2) anticipating and respecting local cultures, expectations and assumptions
3) contributing to intercultural understanding and tolerance
4) supporting the integrity of local cultures by favoring businesses which conserve cultural heritage and traditional values
5) supporting local economies by purchasing local goods and participating with small, local businesses
6) conserving resources by seeking out businesses that are environmentally conscious, and by using the least possible amount of non- renewable resources
Increasingly, destinations and tourism operations are endorsing and following "responsible tourism" as a pathway towards sustainable tourism. Responsible tourism and sustainable tourism have an identical goal, that of sustainable development. The pillars of responsible tourism are therefore the same as those of sustainable tourism – environmental integrity, social justice and economic development. The major difference between the two is that, in responsible tourism, individuals, organisations and businesses are asked to take responsibility for their actions and the impacts of their actions. This shift in emphasis has taken place because some stakeholders feel that insufficient progress towards realising sustainable tourism has been made since the Earth Summit in Rio. This is partly because everyone has been expecting others to behave in a sustainable manner. The emphasis on responsibility in responsible tourism means that everyone involved in tourism – government, product owners and operators, transport operators, community services, NGOs and CBOs, tourists, local communities, industry associations – are responsible for achieving the goals of responsible tourism.
STAKEHOLDERS
Stakeholders of sustainable tourism play a role in continuing this form of tourism. This can include organizations as well as individuals.
Non-governmental organizations
Non-governmental organizations are one of the stakeholders in advocating sustainable tourism. Their roles can range from spearheading sustainable tourism practices to simply doing research. University research teams and scientists can be tapped to aid in the process of planning. Such solicitation of research can be observed in the planning of Cat Ba National Park in Vietnam.
Dive resort operators in Bunaken National Park, Indonesia, play a crucial role by developing exclusive zones for diving and fishing respectively, such that both tourists and locals can benefit from the venture. Large conventions, meetings and other major organized events drive the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. Cities and convention centers compete to attract such commerce, commerce which has heavy impacts on resource use and the environment. Major sporting events, such as the Olympic Games, present special problems regarding environmental burdens and degradation. But burdens imposed by the regular convention industry can be vastly more significant. Green conventions and events are a new but growing sector and marketing point within the convention and hospitality industry. More environmentally aware organizations, corporations andgovernment agencies are now seeking more sustainable event practices, greener hotels, restaurants and convention venues, and more energy efficient or climate neutral travel and ground transportation. Additionally, some convention centers have begun to take direct action in reducing the impact of the conventions they host. One example is the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, which has a very aggressive recycling program, a large solar power system, and other programs aimed at reducing impact and increasing efficiency.
TOURIST
With the advent of the internet, some traditional conventions are being replaced with virtual conventions, where the attendees remain in their home physical location and "attend" the convention by use of a web-based interface programmed for the task. This sort of "virtual" meeting eliminates all of the impacts associated with travel, accommodation, food wastage, and other necessary impacts of traditional, physical conventions.
Travel over long distances requires a large amount of time and/or energy. Generally this involves burning fossil fuels, a largely unsustainable practice and one that contributes to climate change, via CO2 emissions. Air travel is perhaps the worst offender in this regard, contributing to between 2 and 3% of global carbon emissions.[8] Given a business-as-usual approach, this could be expected to rise to 5% by 2015 and 10% by 2050. Car travel is the next worst offender. Mass transport is the most climate friendly method of travel, and generally the rule is "the bigger the better" - compared to cars, buses are relatively more sustainable, and trains and ships are even more so. Human energy and renewable energy are the most efficient, and hence, sustainable. Travel by bicycle, solar powered car, or sailing boat produces no carbon emissions (although the embodied energy in these vehicles generally comes at the expense of carbon emission).[
Community-based management
There has been the promotion of sustainable tourism practices surrounding the management of tourist locations by locals or more concisely, the community.
This form of tourism is based on the premise that the people living next to a resource are the ones best suited to protecting it. This means that the tourism activities and businesses are developed and operated by local community members, and certainly with their consent and support. A good example is Andaman Discoveries, an award-winning social enterprise that supports community-based tourism in Southern Thailand.
Sustainable tourism typically involves the conservation of resources that are capitalized upon for tourism purposes, such as coral reefs and pristine forests. Locals run the businesses and are responsible for promoting the conservation messages to protect their environment.
Community-based sustainable tourism (CBST) associates the success of the sustainability of the ecotourism location to the management practices of the communities who are directly or indirectly dependent on the location for their livelihoods.
A salient feature of CBST is that local knowledge is usually utilised alongside wide general frameworks of ecotourism business models. This allows the participation of locals at the management level and typically allows a more intimate understanding of the environment. The use of local knowledge also means an easier entry level into a tourism industry for locals whose jobs or livelihoods are affected by the use of their environment as tourism locations. The involvement of locals restores the ownership of the environment to the local community and allows an alternative sustainable form of development for communities and their environments that are typically unable to support other forms of development.[citation needed]. However, recent research has found that economic linkages generated by CBST may only be sporadic, and that the linkages with agriculture are negatively affected by seasonality and by the small scale of the cultivated areas. This means that CBST may only have small-scale positive effects for these communities
Sustainable Tourism Destination Management
Sustainable Tourism Destination Management focuses on the comparative advantage and competitive positioning of tourist destinations enhanced by their commitment to sustainable development principles and practices. Emphasis is placed on minimizing the negative impacts of tourism and preserving cultural and natural resources, while optimizing tourism’s overall contribution to economic development in host communities.
Over the last decade, as far as travel and tourism is concerned, the roles and responsibilities of governments as well the private sector and civil society have been significantly altered. According to the UN World Tourism Organization, the current trend in almost all regions of the world is toward semi-public autonomous tourism organizations involving a partnership with the private sector and governmental authorities. Most importantly, the global trend towards decentralization of governance has created a need for new, flexible public-private sector approaches involving key stakeholders in order to enhance a local destination’s attractiveness, marketability, sustainability, service quality and overall competitiveness
Sustainable Tourism Minor
As sustainability expands in popularity as a discipline, students are looking to find ways to better understand how they can apply the principles of sustainability to their specific areas of interest. A minor in sustainable tourism development, within the School of Community Resources and Development, will allow students from any major to learn the basic concepts and theories of tourism development and management and help them to identify the ways in which tourism can contribute to sustainable development locally and globally.
Sustainable Tourism concentration
The Tourism Development and Management major provides students with the theoretical understanding necessary to maneuver the complexities of one of the world's largest industries. A concentration in Sustainable Tourism will allow majors to hone their understanding of the key concepts of sustainability and how they can be applied to tourism destinations and development. Students will learn the dominant theories and language that make up sustainability science and the skills necessary to measure, create and implement sustainability policies in tourism destinations from the planning to the management stage of development. Students will take courses offered by the School of Sustainability in addition to courses in the School of Community Resources and Development, guaranteeing that they have a strong foundation in the basic theories of the growing discipline of sustainability while applying these newfound skills to tourism development and management.
The area of sustainable tourism is becoming increasingly important. Many tourism businesses are hiring sustainability coordinators, including hotels, airlines, convention and visitor bureaus, and large attractions. Tour companies, such as those that implement ecotourism and volunteer tourism experiences, are especially interested in employees with a strong sustainable tourism background. Numerous sustainable tourism nonprofit organizations have emerged in recent years, and many government related tourism organizations also hire those with a strong sustainability focus. As well, consulting opportunities are available to assist tourism businesses with development of sustainable practices.
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