Tourism, development, and sustainability

This chapter approaches sustainable tourism by first conceptualizing tourism as a form of development that depends on conservation of the resources that attract tourists. With this lens, sustainability becomes a top priority as tourism destinations attempt to maintain and enhance their attractiveness to tourists. Concurrently, tourism is an economic activity and is a driver of and is driven by global capitalism. As such, there exists a tension between tourism and sustainability. That tension is explored in this chapter through the question: What is to be sustained The answer to this question is explored in the context of socio-ecological systems and ideas of resilience. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how re-framing sustainable tourism could be implemented through a set of tools.