Pearson BTEC Level 5 HND Diploma in Travel and Tourism Management

HNTT 107: Sustainable Tourism Management

Michal Lozinski

Student number: 12310

Sustainable Tourism Management

The purpose of this paper is to find and describe the ultimate solution for growing tourism
industry. But it not only takes the purpose and goals of the business under consideration. It also
seeks the answer to ensure the safety and comfort of users, and environment. Recent years has
brought different types and models of tourism. The industry growth took different paths and different directions. Therefore, in order to take care of future generations, the planet, and the business
preservation, different researches seem to give the solution, which is sustainable tourism.
Sustainable Tourism can be understand as business that takes full account of economic, social and environmental impacts, both current and future ones. Sustainable tourism gathers and takes
onto considerations the needs of all involved parties: visitors, industry, environment and host communities.
The development of guidelines and management practices of sustainable tourism is useful to
all forms of tourism, to all types of destinations, in both mass tourism and various niche tourism
segments. Its all principles refer to the environmental, economic, socio-cultural aspects of tourism
development, and the balance that should be established between them in order to guarantee future
sustainability.
Here are some principles of sustainable tourism:
take care of the optimal use of environmental resources that are most important in tourism development, help to preserve and maintain both ecological processes and biodiversity,
take host communities and their socio-cultural authenticity under consideration, preserving the
cultural heritage and traditional values, thus contribute to inter-cultural understanding and tolerance,
take care of socio-economical benefits to all parties, that is not only provide income to stockholders but also ensure stable employment and opportunities to host communities,
Tourism is one of the worlds largest and most complex industries, and involves a diverse
value chain based on travel, accommodation, food, drink, different types of activities and destinations.
If we were to discuss different definitions of tourism, and compare sustainable tourism to
eco and pro poor tourism, some definitions are needed.
Ecotourism is now considered as a process of planning, consultation and management of
tourism to local attractions. It is focused around conservation and wildlife, with a big participation
of local culture and it ensures positive experiences between tourist and host communities. As established by The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) in 1990, ecotourism is Responsible travel to
natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people. Another
widely cited definition of ecotourism is purposeful travel to natural areas to understand the culture
and natural history of the environment; taking care not to alter the integrity of the ecosystem; producing economic opportunities that make the conservation of natural resources beneficial to local
people.
Ecotourism is more focused on ecological conservation and educating travellers on local environments and natural surroundings, whereas sustainable tourism focuses on travel that has minimal im-

pact on the environment and local communities. Ecotourism is a form of tourism, or a category of
vacation similar to beach, adventure, health, or cultural, while the concept of sustainability can be
applied to all types of tourism.
Pro poor tourism is quite similar to ecotourism in many ways, but it may take place in any
settings. Specifically pro-poor tourism targets the poorest and most excluded of communities,
where ecotourism may not. In pro poor tourism conservation do not have to be a main concern. Pro
poor tourism generates net benefits for the poor (benefits greater than costs). Strategies for pro-poor
tourism focus specifically on unlocking opportunities for the poor within tourism.
While tourism can have a positive effect on national resources (generating cash to preserve
natural assets and built environment, conservation and preservation of species and habitats...), unfettered consumption of natural resources (atmosphere, fuel, food, water, biodiversity, ecosystems)
should not be a way of further tourism development.
Global economists forecast continuing international tourism growth, ranging between three
and six 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.
In Great Britain the tourism development should evolve within principles of sustainable
development, driven both by national and international intervention and by an ever more sensitised
and demanding consumer. The changes in climate and the depletion of the sources will need to
show an acceptable ecological footprint to attract more discerning consumers.
Tourism development and care about the future generations should provide quality of life for
all individuals of species and preserve natural ecosystem. Therefore, sustainability refers to the potential longevity of vital human ecological support systems, such as the planet's climatic system,
systems of agriculture, industry, forestry, fisheries, and the systems on which they depend.
One of the first and most oftcited definitions of sustainability, and almost certainly the one
that will survive for posterity, is the one created by the Brundtland Commission, led by the former
Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. The Commissions definition of sustainable
development implicitly argues for the rights of future generations to raw materials and vital ecosystem services to be taken into account in decisionmaking :
"Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs."
Within Britain, Scotland has taken a leading position in defining strategies and action plans
for sustainable development in tourism. The Sustainable Tourist Unit of VisitScotland describes the
balance to be achieved in sustainable tourism:
Economic prosperity: long term competitive and prosperous tourism businesses; quality employment opportunities; fair pay and conditions for all employees
Social equity and cohesion: tourism that improves the quality of life of local communities; community involvement in tourism planning and management; safe, satisfying and fulfilling visitor experiences
Environmental and cultural protection: reduced pollution and degradation of the global and local
environment; tourism that maintains and strengthens biodiversity; tourism that maintains and enriches our unique and diverse culture.
Business and sustainability are therefore not incompatible; indeed, if businesses are not economically productive and profitable they cannot employ people, create wealth and contribute,
through taxation, to Governmental expenditure and the public good. A virtuous but bankrupt business benefits noone.
The rapid movement to a world where international and national policy will impact upon the
way that tourism industries must run their businesses; before long, tourism businesses

 will be obliged to set and be held accountable for a carbon account

will need to accommodate green taxes of various kinds
take account of new standards and controls
accommodate a more demanding consumer sensitised to environmental best
practice through Public awareness campaigns
Defining Enclaves
Before we can explore the socio-economic impacts of enclave tourism we must first gain an
undersanding of the term. Lew (2004) explains that the description enclave has been applied to a
wide range of tourism phenomena. Therefore it is important for us to look at the different types of
tourist destination that the term can encompass. Some research papers describe conventional
tourism destinations such as the Spanish Costas as enclaves (OReilly, 2003) while others use the
term referring to cruise ships (Weaver, 2005), Some imply that enclaves can exist in any destination, Judd (1999) coining the phrase tourist bubble synonymously.
According to Edensor (1998) enclaves is any destination or resort that provides a tourist
with everything they require for the length of their stay. Indeed other scholars seem to echo this
view, Lengyel (1980) saying that in enclave systems Holiday-makers are grouped together in an
hotel or a complex of hotels containing all the services thought to be necessary for their sustenance
and entertainment. Lengyels definition implies that enclaves do not spontaneously arise in destinations of tourist activity but that they are designed by tourism managers, and this is something that
Frietag (Insert date) elaborates on. Frietag argues that one of the main denominators of enclave resorts is a notion of inclusiveness and that management create and control a cultural, as well as
physical environment catering to the needs and desires of the tourists.
The sense of inclusiveness runs throughout practically all definitions of enclaves and of
course this cannot help but imply the exclusion of people within the host destination and all the focus seems to be placed on the tourist.
Placing such emphasis on providing everything a tourist needs can lead to visitors having a
distorted view of the location, on this topic, Cohen (1972) saying that a tourist views the people,
places and culture through the protective walls of his familiar environmental bubble. It seems then
that enclaves may not paint a true impression of life in the host destination and Howard (2005) explains that A Japanese tourist might travel to Hawaii on a Japanese plane, stay in a Japanese-owned
hotel, tour only withJapanese guides.
Enclaves therefore seem Ceballos-Lascurain (1996) even goes as far to mention the failure
to recognise the needs of local people within his definition, describing enclave resorts as concentrated in remote areas in which the types of facilities and their physical location fail to take into
consideration the needs and wishes of surrounding communities.
Task 2
Tourism is a fast growing economic activity in many countries around the world, and plays
an important role in the economic and technological development of nations. Tourism serves to
stimulate the development of basic infrastructure, and contributes to the growth of domestic industries. It also attracts foreign investment, and facilitates the transfer of technology and information.
Tourism experts are not able to agree on what tourism is and how it should be measured.
The WTTC reported inits 1995 report that tourism contributed 13% (or $63.79 billion US dollars)
to Canadian Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 1988 and 14.7% (or $1.8 millions) of its total employment. But, a study of the Statistics Canada reported that tourism accounted for 3% (or $13.4
billion Canadian dollars) of Canadian GDP and 5% (467,000 persons/year) of its total employment

in 1988. These huge differences highlight the necessity of a common conceptual framework for
tourism statistics.
A conceptual framework for tourism statistics should give a definition of what tourism is,
draw a boundary of where tourism begins and ends, and provide ways to measure different dimensions of tourism based on the definition and within the boundary. Such a framework is crucial to the
usefulness and the credibility of tourism statistics.
Tourism means different things to different people, because it is an abstraction of a wide
range of consumption activities which demands products and services from a wide range of industries in the economy. According to Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, tourism means
the practice of traveling for recreation,
the guidance or management of tourists,
the promotion or encouragement of touring,
the accommodation of tourists." This multidimensional nature of tourism is well reflected in the
literature of tourism statistics.
Tourism is a concept that can be interpreted differently depending on the context. Tourism
may cover the tourists, or what the tourists do, or the agents which cater to them, and so on.
WTO defines tourism as "the activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outside
their usual environment for no more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes", while at the same time WTO states that "tourism is thus a rather general term, which can
refer to the consumption of tourists, to the production units supplying goods and services particularly to tourists, or even to a set of legal units or of geographical areas related in a way or other to
tourists."
Tourism can be defined as a set of socioeconomic activities carried out either by or for tourists.
Those carried out by tourists correspond to what tourists do, while those carried out for tourists correspond to what other socio-economic institutions do to support the needs of tourists. What is worth
emphasising is that tourism so defined is neither a pure demand-side phenomenon nor a pure supply-side one.
The size of an economy is usually represented by GDP, which can be measured either from
the demand side or from the supply side (An alternative approach is income approach, through
which all forms of income sum up to GDP). From the demand side, it is the total value of the goods
and services produced by the economy and delivered to final demand. From the supply side, it is the
sum of all industries' value added generated in the production of goods and services. A schematic
presentation of these two approaches is given in Figure 1, where industries are omitted from the
supply side.
Tourism also has a demand side and a supply side but differs from the whole economy in
two important ways. First, tourism can not be defined and measured from supply side independent
of its demand side. Since tourism is primarily a consumption phenomenon, its supply is defined by
its demand, in the sense that tourism demand is always defined first and then used as a guide for
identifying its suppliers. Second, tourism final demand does not equal the value added generated by
tourism suppliers in the process of supplying to tourism final demand. Since tourism suppliers have
to produce their products with inputs from other industries, the value of these products contains the
value added created in other industries.
Despite these differences, tourism can be measured from both the demand and supply side,
as proposed by WTO. From the demand side, tourism is measured by tourism expenditures on
goods and services. As WTO defines it, tourism expenditure is "the total consumption expenditure
made by a visitor or on behalf of a visitor for and during his trip and stay at destination". According
to this definition, tourism expenditure includes all goods and services consumed by a tourist. It en-

compasses a wide variety of items ranging from the purchase of consumer goods and services inherent in travel to the purchase of small durable goods for personal use, souvenirs and gifts to family and friends.
WTO also proposes a supply side approach. Based on this approach, "tourism is defined as a
characteristic of establishments principally oriented towards the supply of goods and services to
tourists. Tourism would then be determined by what and how much the tourist establishments produce".
The criterion used in WTO's manual to classify establishments into tourism is that customers
of these establishments are mainly tourists. This criterion is most likely to be satisfied if at least one
of the following two conditions holds. First, an establishment sells goods or provides services for
final consumption, which, by nature, are principally demanded by tourists, such as hotels, long distance passenger transportation, and travel agencies, etc. Second, an establishment sells goods or
provides services for final consumption in tourist zones in which the majority of customers are
tourists, such as food and beverage services, taxi services, cleaners, and barber shops, etc.
Tourism is primarily a consumption activity. Therefore, the total expenditure on tourism as a
measure of tourism size seems to be a natural choice. However, the existence of business tourism
causes the following problem.
Double counting. GDP as the total final demand includes tourism final demand but not business tourism demand, which is part of the intermediate demand. Therefore, the combination of
tourism final demand and business tourism demand is not comparable to GDP. Fundamentally, this
non-comparability is caused by two sources of double counting inherent in the total tourism expenditure in comparison to GDP. First, part of business tourism is used as input to produce tourism final demand and hence its value is already embodied in and counted as part of the value of tourism
final demand. Second, the production (or supply) of business tourism uses business tourism as inputs. For example, in the business of providing hotel services the hotel industry uses hotel services
as part of the inputs to its production. The value of business tourism used as inputs to the production
of business tourism is double counted in the output of business tourism.
Tourism can bring many economic and social benefits, particularly in rural areas and developing countries, but mass tourism is also associated with negative effects. Tourism can only be sustainable if it is carefully managed so that potential negative effects on the host community and the
environment are not permitted to outweigh the financial benefits.
Tourism creates jobs, both through direct employment within the tourism industry and indirectly in sectors such as retail and transportation. When these people spend their wages on goods
and services, it leads to what is known as the "multiplier effect," creating more jobs. The tourism
industry also provides opportunities for small-scale business enterprises, which is especially important in rural communities, and generates extra tax revenues, such as airport and hotel taxes, which
can be used for schools, housing and hospitals.
Successful tourism relies on establishing a basic infrastructure, such as roads, visitor centers
and hotels. The cost of this usually falls on the government, so it has to come out of tax revenues.
Jobs created by tourism are often seasonal and poorly paid, yet tourism can push up local property
prices and the cost of goods and services. Money generated by tourism does not always benefit the
local community, as some of it leaks out to huge international companies, such as hotel chains. Destinations dependent on tourism can be adversely affected by events such as terrorism, natural disasters and economic recession.
The improvements to infrastructure and new leisure amenities that result from tourism also
benefit the local community. Tourism encourages the preservation of traditional customs, handicrafts and festivals that might otherwise have been allowed to wane, and it creates civic pride. In-

terchanges between hosts and guests create a better cultural understanding and can also help raise
global awareness of issues such as poverty and human rights abuses.
Visitor behavior can have a detrimental effect on the quality of life of the host community.
For example, crowding and congestion, drugs and alcohol problems, prostitution and increased
crime levels can occur. Tourism can even infringe on human rights, with locals being displaced
from their land to make way for new hotels or barred from beaches. Interaction with tourists can
also lead to an erosion of traditional cultures and values.
Tourism -- particularly nature and ecotourism -- helps promote conservation of wildlife and
natural resources such as rain forests, as these are now regarded as tourism assets. It also helps generate funding for maintaining animal preserves and marine parks through entrance charges and
guide fees. By creating alternative sources of employment, tourism reduces problems such as overfishing and deforestation in developing nations.
Tourism poses a threat to a region's natural and cultural resources, such as water supply,
beaches, coral reefs and heritage sites, through overuse. It also causes increased pollution through
traffic emissions, littering, increased sewage production and noise.

Bibliography:
Lew, A. (2004) Editorial: Tourism enclaves in place and mind. Tourism Geographies 6 (1),1.
OReilly, K. (2003) When is a tourist? The articulation of tourism and migration in Spains
Costa del Sol. Tourist Studies 3 (3), 301317.
Weaver, A. (2005) Spaces of containment and revenue capture: Super-sized cruise shipsas mobile
tourism enclaves. Tourism Geographies 7 (2), 165184.
Judd, D.R. (1999) Constructing the tourist bubble. In D.R. Judd and S. Fainstein (eds) The Tourist
City (pp. 3553). New Haven: Yale University Press
Edensor, T. (1998) Performing tourism, staging tourism: (Re)producing tourist space and practice.
Tourist Studies 1 (1), 5981.
Internet sources:
http://www.visitbritain.org
DOA: 26/07/2014