1.
Introduction
 The term sustainability is often used in an undiscerning
and loose way and has turned into somewhat of a
“container term”
 it has become a ‘buzz word’, and one that is worth
reflecting on.
 At any rate, sustainability has developed into the
“categorical imperative of contemporary responsibility
for Creation”
 Switzerland was the first country to add the term
sustainability to its constitution in Article 2 (since
January 1, 2000):).

2.
Cont..
 Sustainability is an ‘essentially contested
concept’ (Gaillie 1955–56); that is, a concept
the use and application of which is inherently
a matter of dispute.
 The reason for this is the degree to which the
concept is used to refer to a ‘balance’ or ‘wise’
use in the way in which natural resources are
exploited.

3.
Cont..
 Sustainability is no longer a niche topic.
 It will always have its relevance and
become the subject for a contemporary
assessment of progress and responsibility,
freedom and culture.
 Linguists and scientists can therefore
claim that the concept of sustainability has
been well established globally in politics,
the economy and our society.

4.
Cont...
 However, whilst the term is becoming
increasingly popular, doubts have also been
raised about whether the promised
harmonization of ecological, social and
economic goals, associated with sustainability,
is actually achievable.
 Sustainable development is a multi-
faceted term—“a buzz word and imported
word” but also a “disparaging and praising
term at the same time”.

5.
Description and Essence of
Sustainability
 The first graphical displays of Sustainability developed
one and two column models (Carnau, 2011).
 The focus was on the three goals of ecology, economy
and social affairs .
 This “sustainability formula” (Vogt, 2009, p. 102) had a
significant impact on the environmental debate in the
‘70s and ‘80s. “In theory, the principles of sustainability
have been agreed upon in 1992, and effort has been
made to implement them, but in actual fact hardly any
progress has been made towards these objectives” (Vogt,
2009, p. 102).

6.
Cont...
 The paratactic understanding of the three-pillar
model that ecology, economy and social equity are
equally weighted interrelated pillars threatens the
guideline function of the principles defined.
 They are used to hide contradictions and
differences instead of finding a consensus on core
issues, goals and priorities. (…).

7.
Cont..
 Sustainability will remain a meaningful
concept only where it continues to be an
environmentally focused concept, and where a
systematic integration of environmental issues
into other sectors of politics, economy and
society is achieved.
 The ‘triangle of sustainability’ was further
developed into a ‘magic triangle’ with
environmental dimension, economic
dimension, and social dimension in place .

8.
Cont..
 These debates are, in turn, bound up within the
wider frameworks of attitudes towards the
environment that exist both in contemporary
society and, just as importantly, over time.
 Although environmental issues are now taken for
granted as a policy-making concern, it needs to be
remembered that the ‘age of ecology’ is arguably a
very recent phenomenon, with the first.

9.
Academic Adoption of ‘Sustainable Tourism’
and ‘Sustainable Development’
 As Hall (2011) suggested, the notion of
sustainable tourism must be regarded as one of
the great success stories of tourism research and
knowledge transfer.
 It has become incorporated into the fabric of
tourism discourse in academic, business and
governance terms.

10.
Cont..
 Following Jafari’s (1989) idea of academic platforms
occupied by tourism researchers, the late-1980s were
characterised by a quest for knowledge about
tourism’s potential impacts – environmental, socio-
cultural and economic – in tourist destinations around
the world .
 Initially focusing on different types of tourism, notably
ecotourism, the concept of sustainable tourism
development only slowly gained attention in tourism
research.

11.
Cont..
 The relation between tourism and sustainable
development was not programmatically
specified until 1997 through the Agenda 21 for
the Travel and Tourism Industry (Agenda 21)
(World Travel and Tourism Council, World
Tourism Organization and the Earth Council,
1997)

12.
Cont..
 Sustainable tourism is centred on the viability of
tourism and balancing industry and
environmental impacts (Hunter, 1995).
 Sustaining tourism implies that management of
the net productive value of the ‘natural’ capital is
calculated in order to implement compensating
resource replacement and substitution strategies
(Hughes, 1995).

13.
Cont..
 Sustainable tourism may be regarded most basically
as the application of the sustainable development idea
to the tourism sector – that is, tourism development
that meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their own needs or, in concert with Budowski’s
(1976) ‘symbiosis’ scenario’

14.
Cont..
 Meant to provide enjoyment for tourists and
residents alike and becoming a source of local
income, paradoxically, conservation efforts to
maintain absolute equilibrium mean that the
environment, including social and cultural
aspects, should be kept in an unimpaired state
for present and future generations.

15.
Cont..
 Such an anthropocentric approach rests on
static conceptualisations that neglect
contemporary knowledge about the dynamics
of the environment and culture.
 Sustainable tourism is hereby reduced to
maintaining a ‘natural’ equilibrium as a
measurable state toward which intervention
strategies can be applied as an economic trade-
off between present utilisation and presumed
future needs.

16.
Cont..
 Tourism that wisely uses and conserves resources in
order to maintain their long-term viability.
 Essentially, sustainable tourism involves the
minimization of negative impacts and the maximization
of positive impacts.

17.
WHY IS SUSTAINABILITY IMPORTANT
 Sustainability is important for number of reasons:
 Sustainability approach would enable companies to
mitigate impact on environment, which is important to
maintain equilibrium in the world.
 It is also important to reduce emissions and also
minimize climate changes.
 It would enable to contribute meaningfully to the
society as well as build up positive relationship with
communities.

18.
Cont..
 Sustainability approach would also enable to
build a unique competitive advantage for the
firms. It would enable to create a stronger bond
with employees and stakeholders as well.
 It enables optimizing the utilization of
resources as well as reduces impact of
operations on nearby areas.

19.
Cont..
 Eg. Hotel Energy Solutions (2013): “In a world
looking for new models of economic growth and
development, fighting climate change and adopting
sustainable management practices is no longer an
option, but a condition for survival and success…”
 The “green” hotel business is a growing niche
because not only do these establishments
differentiate themselves from the similar non-green
hotels, but they also fulfil a need in the market for
less environmentally damaging hotels.

20.
Cont..
 According to Fitiadisa (2013) this is mainly realized
with decreases in costs achieved by the reduction of
resource consumption and decreases in expenses and
expected future expenses.
 There are many other benefits realized from the
introduction of more environmentally friendly
practices such as reduced energy consumption, the
avoidance of penalties enacted by environmental
authorities, and accompanying improvements in
customer trust and public image.

21.
Cont..
 Manaktola and Jauhari (2007) remark that
becoming a green hotel can be the foundation for
a great marketing strategy, and the first step in
marketing is providing consumers with what
they want or need.
 A growing consumer base exists for green hotels,
and marketing the green practices of a hotel can
help to position it distinctly in the market place.

22.
Cont..
 The environment is the major recipient of negative
impacts created by the construction and operation of hotel
and facilities.
 The success of tourism, as well as the hotel industry,
largely depends on the availability of a clean
environment.
 Exerting pressure for change: the increase in influence of
the “green” investor including banks that want to limit
exposure to environmental risk, and the “disproportionate
influence on consumer behavior” of environmental
pressure groups.

23.
Sustainable Development and Sustainable
Tourism
 The notion of sustainable development is now
integral to tourism, policy and management.
 Indeed, the political and economic debate over
the way in which sustainability should be
defined, developed and implemented is a
reflection of longstanding differences between
different members of society over the best use
of resources in industrial society.

24.
CONT...
 The famous Brundtland defined ‘sustainable
development is development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs’
 Sustainable development has come to feature in many
tourism textbooks, journal articles and student essays,
even though tourism was hardly mentioned in the
report

25.
CONT..
 As the world becomes more complex,
sustainability as a concept will gain more
momentum.
 Changing technologies, more affluence and
widening digital divide, urban migration across
economies, global climate changes and imbalance
in resources will exude more demands on finite
resources.
 The issues of water, energy, transport, housing,
healthcare will become more pronounced in the
coming decades.

26.
 In light of these changes, sustainability in the
context of hospitality industry will assume more
importance.
 Hospitality as an industry has an immense ability
to contribute to economic growth of the world.
 The appropriateness of such an approach and the
very way in which ‘wise use’ is defined will
depend on the disparate values and ideologies of
various stakeholders

27.
Sustainable Tourism
 The paradigm of sustainable tourism
emerged, and is still evolving, as a result of
developments both internal and external to
the tourism sector over the past half-
century.
 Sustainable tourism is centred on the
viability of tourism and balancing industry
and environmental impacts (Hunter, 1995).

28.
CONT..
 Sustaining tourism implies that management of
the net productive value of the ‘natural’ capital is
calculated in order to implement compensating
resource replacement and substitution strategies
(Hughes, 1995).
 Meant to provide enjoyment for tourists and
residents alike and becoming a source of local
income, paradoxically, conservation efforts to
maintain absolute equilibrium mean that the
environment, including social and cultural
aspects, should be kept in an unimpaired state
for present and future generations.

29.
CONT..
 Sustainable tourism is hereby reduced to
maintaining a ‘natural’ equilibrium as a
measurable state toward which intervention
strategies can be applied as an economic trade-
off between present utilisation and presumed
future needs.

30.
Guiding Values in Sustainable Tourism
Development
 The five value sets are: Ethics, Knowledge,
Professionalism, Mutuality and
Stewardship.
 Underpinned by a holistic and relational
perspective, the values are portrayed as
interlocking value principles because of
their interconnectedness and their
permeability.

31.
Ethics
 Ethics is concerned with distinguishing between
behaviour that is right and is wrong.
 It is the basis for good action and provides a
framework for judging actions that are questionable
Ethical behaviour means striving for actions that
are deemed ‘good’ based on principles and values.
 It also involves making such principles and values
explicit and rendering the decision-making
processes transparent.

32.
CONT.
 Recognising that good actions do not occur in a
vacuum but are derived from specific value
systems further requires understanding and
respect for actions based on different systems
e.g. teleology and deontology.
 Following Tribe (2002b), by examining ethics
we can further clarify the values of sustainable
tourism development as they relate to good and
just tourism

33.
CONT..
 Cohen (2002) points to the misuse of the concept
in ‘ecotourism’ as a marketing gimmick and, more
fundamentally, the unequal power relations at
stake in tourism development.
 Seeing everyone as impartially situated as equals
(Rawls, 1971) good and just tourism is not only
for the few and wealthy who can afford to travel
to safe havens before the crowds get there.

34.
CONT..
 Moreover, local populations in developing
countries are often marginalised when external
agents such as private or state entrepreneurs
take control over valuable sites or attractive
cultural practices in the name of sustainability.
 Local communities are frequently depicted as
the ones damaging the environment due to
‘traditional’ practices

35.
CONT...
 The ethical principle of intergenerational equity is
easily masked behind the rhetoric of involving
locals as participants in the development phase
and perhaps as service personnel.
 A very different connotation of equity is to address
locals as users and stakeholders, which also
secures local accessibility to valued environments
(Cohen, 2002: 273

36.
CONT..
 Examples of local displacements are manifold,
and only two will serve to illustrate the point
about equitable access here.
 In many parts of the eastern Caribbean, prime
beach-front properties are occupied by all-
inclusive hotel complexes and condominiums.
 Consequently, claims of trespassing are made if
locals attempt to enjoy their place in the sun. In
the South African game reserves, it is well
known that ‘locals poach’ while ‘tourists hunt’

37.
Knowledge
 Knowledge can be described as: expertise and
skills acquired by a person through experience
or education; the theoretical or practical
understanding of a subject; what is known in a
particular field; facts and information; or
awareness or familiarity gained by experience
of a fact or situation. This implies that
knowledge is more than data (summary
descriptions of parts of the world around us)
and more than information (data put into a

38.
CONT..
 Knowledge comes in both explicit and tacit formats. In
most instances, it is not possible to have an exhaustive
understanding of an information domain so knowledge is
ceaselessly incomplete.
 Knowledge is information connecting to existing
knowledge. Knowledge is created through processes of
selecting, connecting and reflecting.
 Knowledge is always already predicated by existing
knowledge, which means that knowledge involves
interpretation and contextualisation.

39.
CONT..
 The dissemination and development of knowledge
takes place in social environments that are
characterised by information sharing and social
interaction.
 Access to social and educational networks can create
or assist in refining the use of knowledge.
 Networks and knowledge repositories are opening up
as a consequence of the development of technical and
institutional remedies connected to the social media

40.
Professionalism
 ‘Professionalism’ is a rather nebulous term as it
implies not only a profession and the skills,
competencies or standards associated with it, but
also an attitude and behaviour that reflect these.
 It has been defined as the ability to align personal
and organisational conduct with ethical and
professional standards that include a responsibility
to the customer or guest and community, a service
orientation, and a commitment to lifelong learning
and improvement (Hoyle and John, 1995

41.
CONT..
 Professionalism incorporates leadership,
practicality, attention to services, concern for
the relevance and timeliness of evidence,
reflexivity, teamwork and partnership building
skills, and proactivity.
 These elements of professionalism expose the
need for a holistic approach to tourism
education similar to Tribe (2002a) where
broader aims of the industry and society are
explicitly addressed in tourism curricula.

42.
CONT..
 Tourism education also needs to provide
students with a dynamic learning experience
that will enable them to operate sustainably
and effectively in a fast changing and service-
intensive sector, which Tribe (2002a) refers to
as ‘philosophical practitioners’

43.
Stewardship
 Stewardship implies the responsibility to care
for something and the accountibility to
exercise responsibility.
 As the editors of the present volume contend
that the value of stewardship is deeply
reflected in sustainable development, only a
brief introduction to stewardship is provided
he

44.
Mutual Respect
 mutual respect has been initially defined as
diversity, inclusion, equity, humility and
collaboration.
 Equality requires different opinions,
philosophies of life and cultures to be met
with tolerance and mutual respect on the basis
of universal human rights.

45.
Sustainable Tourism Planning
 Tourism not properly planned and managed can
leave permanent footprints on the physical,
social, cultural and economic environments of
destinations.
 Tourism development can be alienating to local
residents, overcrowded, noisy, architecturally
tasteless, and place pressures on infrastructure.

46.
CONT..
 Inappropriate types and scales of development
may arise due to laissez-faire tourism policies
and a lack of national, regional or local planning
and regulation.
 Governments and stakeholders in the tourism
sector have a responsibility to ensure that in the
development of tourism long-term prosperity and
the quality of life of future generations are not
placed at risk.

47.
Cont..
 Sustainable tourism development requires a
process of planning and management that
brings together the interests and concerns of a
diverse group of stakeholders in a sustainable
and strategic way.
 It is this complexity that demands a planning
approach which is multidimensional and is
purposely integrative.

48.
CONT..
 Tourism planning requires an understanding of
the meaning of sustainable development and the
guiding values for promoting sustainable tourism.
 It requires that communities be made to be
sufficiently aware of the tourism industry and
enabled to understand its impacts, as well as the
various processes to integrate and engage in
participatory planning, consensus building and
conflict resolution among all stakeholders.

49.
Sustainability Approach to Planning
 The expected outcomes from tourism planning is
sensitivity to environmental, social and cultural attributes
of the destination.
 •
Provides quality tourism and leisure experiences valued
by visitors and •residents is valued by business,
government and the community. •
Subsequently there are
several guiding principles that underpin planning for
sustainable tourism development.
 These include: responsibility, commitment and
leadership, cooperation, education, social creativity and
freedom

50.
Responsibility to Protect Natural and
Cultural/Heritage Environments
 The tourism industry shares with local residents,
governments and all people the obligation to
protect and maintain the heritage resources of
our planet, which are required both to sustain
economies.
 This recognises the importance of the continuity
of natural resources and the continuity of culture
and the balances within culture (Wall, 1993) the
act locality next the global think)

51.
Commitment and Leadership
 Destinations require strong, committed and
effective leadership by business, government
and community leaders at all levels.
 A proactive role by stakeholders, rather than a
passive one is necessary to ensure that heritage
values are fully sustained.
 More good community projects fail due to
leadership breakdown than for any other
reason.

52.
Cooperation
 Since all industries share responsibility for
heritage and natural resources protection,
coordination and support between all
stakeholders is crucial to the achievement of
sustainable tourism.
 Stakeholders are the people and organisations
who are or will be affected by tourism
development either in the present or in
subsequent years (Morra-Imas and Rist, 2009)

53.
Cont..
 We can distinguish four different stakeholders
groups concerned with tourism within any
destination:
 Government authorities – with responsibility for
planning the resources and •
maintenance of basic
municipal infrastructure
 Local business community – who derive an
income from the operation of commercial
enterprise (this group includes owners,
employees and suppliers)

54.
Cont..
 Local community – who share their area with
each other and visitors; and •
 Visitors – who make tourism viable. •
(Bushell
and Staiff, 2003)

55.
Education
 Sustainable tourism development involves the
establishment of education and training programmes
to improve public understanding and to enhance
business and professional skills
 The tourism industry in any region depends on a
stable pool of skilled employees who can progress in
their careers to higher levels of employment.
 Businesses and communities must work together to
inform, educate and inspire in everyone, stewardship
and appreciation for the natural and cultural heritage
and its protection through responsible conduct

56.
Social creativity and freedom
 Some regulation of every industry is inevitable, but
sustainable tourism is best achieved as the product of a
community sharing a vision for its economic, physical
and social character.
 There is a need to strike a balance between economic,
environmental and social imperatives. This recognises
that development is a process that enhances the quality
of life, a broader notion than economic prosperity.
 In the context of sustainability, development is best
described as a change process which can be physical
change, attitudinal, and/or cultural change.

57.
The Policy Problem Attributes of Sustainable
Tourism: Implications for Approaches
 Sustainability is a ‘wicked’ or meta-policy
problem that has led to new institutional
arrangements and policy settings at international,
national and local scales.
 Sustainable tourism is a sub-set of this broader
policy arena discourse , with its own specific set
of institutions and policy actors at various scales,
as well as being a sub-set of tourism policy
overall (Hall, 2011).

58.
Cont..
 Sustainability problems may also pose different
challenges than other policy problems (e.g.
education, taxation, health because of its
attributes including:
i. Temporality – Natural systems function over
timescales that are often vastly greater than
those which determine political and policy
cycles (i.e. electoral terms) and business cycles
and planning (i.e. quarterly reporting and annual
shareholder meetings

59.
Cont..
ii. Spatiality – Sustainability and environmental
problems tend to be cross-boundary in nature and
for some types of problems (e.g. climate change,
deforestation, and biodiversity loss) global in scale
One of the most significant forms of spatial
problem in sustainability is the mismatch between
government, regulatory and jurisdictional space,
and ecological/ environmental boundaries; this
greatly complicates the management of certain
issues (e.g. watershed and species habitat).

60.
Cont..
iii. Limits – The concept of sustainability suggests that
there are limits to exploitation of natural capital
because of its limited capacity for renewal.
iv. Cumulative – Most anthropogenic impacts are
cumulative rather than discrete.
v. Irreversibility – Some natural capital or
environmental assets cannot be renewed (i.e. a
species) or are not easily substituted. In some cases
(e.g. soil, groundwater or ozone), the timescale for
renewal is well outside the normal parameters of
policy and business cycles.

61.
Cont..
vi. Complexity and connectivity – Sustainability
problems are interconnected or interlocking
meaning that issues such as climate change and
biodiversity cannot be easily separated in
scientific terms although they often are in policy-
making and institutional arrangements.
Solutions to environmental sustainability
problems, therefore, have salient implications for
social and economic policy and vice versa

62.
Cont..
vii. Ontology – The terms ‘human impact’ or ‘tourism
impact’ ontological positions of tourism and
tourists as ‘outside’ the system under analysis, as
outside of nature from a realist material ontology of
classical empiricism (Hall 2013).
 This is despite research on global environmental
change demonstrating just how deeply entangled
tourism is in environmental systems (Gössling &
Hall 2006)

63.
Cont..
viii. Uncertainty – Some aspects of sustainability
are characterised by ‘pervasive uncertainty’
making it difficult to determine the efficacy,
implications and socio-economic impacts of
policy measures (Dovers & Handmer 1992).
Viv. Ethical issues – Although ethical questions
are integral to all policy choices, sustainability is
complicated by the centrality of both intra- and
inter-generational equity to the concept, as well
as the rights of non-human species).

64.
Cont..
The development and use of
indicators is increasingly
viewed as a fundamental part
of overall.

65.
Common Pool Resources in Tourism
 The CPR discourse is rooted in the theory of
public goods in public economics (Samuelson
1954).
 CPRs are natural human resources characterized
by nonexcludability in their use and
subtractability because their quantity is finite for
specified time period.
 This implies rivalry and competition in their use
among potential users.
 Read the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ by Ostrom,

66.
Cont...
 CPRs are the atmosphere, water resources, oceans,
fisheries, ecosystems, forests, wildlife, landscapes, and
grazing systems, among others.
 Non-conventional CPRs include transport systems,
ports, urban areas, the Internet, the electro-magnetic
spectrum, genetic data, traditional transmission (cultural
commons), intellectual resources, socio-economic costs
and benefits, and budgets, among others.

67.
Cont..
 Ostrom (1990) has distinguished three types
of CPR users: owners (ownership rights),
appropriators (use rights) and consumers
(utilization rights).
 The role of CPRs in tourism has been
addressed mostly in the context of the
broader discourse on sustainable tourism
development.

68.
Cont..
 The tourism commons (TC) can be defined as the
collection of natural, manmade and socio-cultural
resources in host areas and their surrounding regions
which are implicated in tourism;
 Thus, they are purposefully or inadvertently used in
common by tourist and non-tourist activities.
 The elements of the TC belong to four broad
categories: the broader landscape, natural,
sociocultural and manmade resources.

69.
Cont..
 Nonexcludability and subtractability:
 These are the principal defining features of the
tourism commons.
 The idea underlined that It is not easy or feasible
to exclude tourists or other users from using the
TC.
 Moreover, as soon as the conditions of the TC
improve (e.g. bathing water) for a class of
tourists this improvement is shared by all users.

70.
CONT..
 Heterogeneity and variety:
 The tourism commons are inherently heterogeneous
in several respects.
 They comprise diverse resources. Their elements are
both material (tangible) and immaterial (intangible)
and they are subject to multiple consumptive and
nonconsumptive uses (Steins & Edwards 1999

71.
Governing the Tourism
Commons
 Governance refers to dynamic political processes
whereby state and non-state actors, from various
spatial/organizational levels, set collective goals
and select specific structures, mechanisms and
instruments of coordination to steer society
towards achieving them.
 Models of governance reflect theories specifying
who should be involved (politics), how – through
which structures and processes (polity), and
which instruments should be employed (policy) to
steer society towards desirable goals

72.
CONT..
 The governance of the commons has been the focus of
important research in the last decades, the landmark
work being Ostrom’s “Governing the Commons’
 Governing the tourism commons is far from easy
given their heterogeneity and the threats they face.
 The overarching goal is to promote sustainable
tourism at destination regions.
 Two specific objectives are to address the threats
identified and to provide incentives for using the TC
sustainably.

73.
CONT..
 Suitable governance systems to achieve these
goals should respect the particular features and
the importance of the different elements of the
TC for sustainable development in specific
tourism socio-economic and political contexts.