Sustainable Tourism: The Complications Of Sustainable Development

Introduction With global changes, various impacts of tourism are observed in a clear way now. Butler (1999, p.8) asserts that “if there is a single factor that has the potential to change the nature of tourism more than any other, it is the introduction of the concept of sustainable development” because it promises fundamental changes in the components of tourism. The concept of ‘sustainable development’ has been long recognized together with 1987 WCED Brutland Report, Our Common Future, which was commissioned by the United Nations (UN). It indicates that a sole economic success is not sufficient for the longevity of resources; that it is only plausible with intergenerational equity as well as intragenerational equity (Finnetty, 2001; Tosun, 2001; Macbeth, 2005). Here, sustainable development was explained as: "development that meets the needs of the present without

The chronological development of the concept of sustainable tourism. Adapted from Swarbrooke (1999). After the Brutland Report (1987), tourism academics and practitioners began to consider its implications on tourism, and hence, sustainable tourism as a term started to be used from the late 1980s onwards although terms like ‘green tourism’ and ‘green issues’ attracted more attention at that time (Swarbrooke,

Additionally, community participation and empowerment of local people in tourism has become major issues (i.e. Sofield, 2003; Richards and Hall, 2003). Collaboration and coordination between tourism stakeholders have also gained importance over the recent years. (i.e. Barkin and Bouchez, 2002; Byrd,