The Applying Problems and Resolving to Implement Sustainable Tourism
The applying problems and the resolving to implement sustainable tourism In this day and age, tourism is one of the largest industries, with an increasing number of tourists all around the world. Because of this, there are many impacts on humankind, with both positive and negative sides. Hence, the sustainable tourism, which is the concept of visiting an area as a tourist and trying to make a balance of the social, culture, economic and especially environmental dimensions, is gained in importance.
However, Frey & George (2010) describe that this concept seems to play a significant role in tourism field, but only few of tourism businesses are participating in. This essay will examine the reasons and some possible suggestions. It will first explain the overall of the definition of the sustainable tourism. Then the focus moves onto the factors applying the unsuccessfully sustainability in practice and some specific examples.
Next, some feasible measures will be provided. Finally, it draws a conclusion on the limited in the concept of sustainable tourism. There are a few definitions of sustainability within the context of tourism, including ecotourism, green travel, environmentally and culturally responsible tourism, fair trade and ethical travel.
To most people, sustainable tourism, that is the most important way to success in sustainability, is still not widely understood despite the remarkable growth of the sustainable tourism industry; therefore, Frey & George (2010) has defined the overall meaning and concept of sustainable tourism in their article that is a part of sustainable development, which is the most valuable of economic, social, natural and cultural resources by management, protection, and conservation, and still maintains its unique as long as possible for sustainable development that could create the better experience for responsible visitors.
By definition, such the sustainable tourism should reach its objective, but it is not because there are other difficulties. First of all, the main reason that leads to the failure of sustainable tourism is the administration and management with involving organizations, including both policy and operational levels such as the authority of tourism and the local community organization. These government agencies are the majority of the sustainable development; however, in recently years, the development always operates by each individual organization especially in developing countries.
The challenge to the sustainable tourism development in Turkey is the best example to illustrate this reason. Tosun (2001) shows the conflict between the central and the local government. The former has concerned about the overall development by supports and promotions of the sustainable tourism in order to enchance the better economy. Nevertheless, the latter has their own policies solving the local specifically problems in each area, so they do not want to follow the centralization. As a result of this agrument, the sustainabiliy has to face with the failure.
All of above, you can see the important of the collaboration. Subsequently, shifting in carring capacity is not balancing to demands of visitors. The government support the tourism development but supplied are not enough to provided. The best example is the tourism development in Gambia, Thompson, O’Hare, & Evans (1995) find that the Gambia government has encouraged the tourism development because they recognize the charming climate and the beautiful landscape that is attractive for a large number of tourists; eventhough, the resources, such as accommodations, facilities, and natural resources, are limited.
Consequently, the tourism has been growing in leaps and bounds in a short time, so the management, including economy, natural resources, administration and investment, facilities development, education, and training, is proposed. By doing this, the spread of drug abuse, enhanced crime rates, increases in prostitution, and the spread of sexually transmittes diseases are some of the following social problems; as a result of the failure in the development of sustainable tourism (ibid). The scarcity of resources is one of the key problem to develop the sustainable tourism.
Another major reason that needs to be taken into account is a cooperation of people in each community with government policies. These people are playing roles that relate to the sustainable touriam in many forms, such as the ownership and supplier of goods and services. The importance of these people might be mechanism in the development of the sustainable tourism. If these people do not cooperate, the development would delay or interrupt. As Ioannides’ (1995) argues in his article about a flawed implementation of the ustainable tourism in Akamas, Cyprus, in this area, the government requires to turn the mass tourism into ecotourism, which is base on the national park area, because of a lack of accommodations and facilities. By the way, the local people do not agree with this policy so the government offers the other alternative tourism such as argotourism. The farmers and agriculturists feel that is unfair to them anymore so they still do not give the cooperation. All of above, there is not only the reasonable government policies, but also consisting the collaboration of the local people.
Despite the reasons as mentioned above, some possible sugguestions for sustainable tourism development are also given. One of the most possible way is a collaboration and a integrated tourism plan by balancing the economic, social, and natural resources in the vary progress towards the sustainable tourism, and a analysis how the plan can do in practice (Kernel, 2005). By doing this, the situation could be improved. An another useful suggestion woud be the evaluation about the ability to support the sufficient demands of visitors or limite the number of travellers to visit the country (Fortuny, Soler, Canovas, & Sanchez, 2008).
Consequently, the result would allow the balance of the demand and supply suitable for tourism. The further measure to solve this problem is the cooperation of people based at level of individual investment rather than the tourism sector may be effective in more cooperation between the government, local citizens, and tourists (Garrod & Fyall, 1998). Lastly, creating networks and sharing the information and/or guidelines between the countries facing the same crisis can be useful for each other(Kernel, 2005).
If all of these sugguestions were implemented, the sustainable tourism could be successful and optimized as long as possible. From the aforementioned problems and solutions of the sustainable tourism, it can be concluded that the most important point is the understanding about the concept of sustainable tourism. Although, there are some factors, such as the lack of resources, the conflict betweeen the central and local government, and the cooperate from the local people, that make the concept unpracticed as it could.
On the other hand, the issues about development and promotion of the sustainable tourism are about the parcticability in real life. If the government and the local people who own the tourism areas had cooperated and shared ideas with multilateral together basing to the goal of the development, and encourage people to wisely consume the resources, it could be an effective way to the sustainability. There are not only the responsibility of the people in each country, but also including the tourists from another country because the sustainable tourism development relies on the cooperating people and the resources.
References
- Garrod, B. and Fyall, A. (1998), Beyond the Rhetoric of Sustainable Tourism? , Tourism Management Vol. 19, No. 3, 199-212
- Thompson, C. , O’Hare, G. and Evens, K. (1995), Tourism in the Gambia: Problems and Proposals, Tourism Management Vol. 16, No. 8, 571-581
- Tosun, C. (2001), Challenges Of Sustainable Tourism Development in the Developing World: The Case of Turkey, Tourism Management 22, 289-303
- Ioannides, D. (1995), A Flawed Implementation of Sustainable Tourism: The Experience of Akamas, Cyprus, Tourism Management Vol. 16, No. , 583-592
- Fortuny, M. , Soler, R. , Canovas, C. and Sanchez, A. (2007)
- Technical Approach for a Sustainable Tourism Development: Case Study in the Balearic Islands, Journal of Cleaner Production 16, 860-869
- Frey, N. and George, R. (2010), Responsible Tourism Management: The Missing Link between Business Owners’ Attitudes and Behaviour in the Cape Town Tourism Industry, Tourism Management 31, 621–628 Kernel, P. (2005)
- Creating and Implementing a Model for Sustainable Development in Tourism Enterprises, Journal of Cleaner Production 13, 151–164
