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RESOURCES


RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS

Author : Wolfgang Strasdas
School/Work Place : Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development, Germany
Contact : wolfgang.strasdas@hnee.de
Year : 2014

Tourism destinations are complex entities that can be defined as geographical areas of different sizes that are being visited by tourists. Most definitions then differentiate between the perspectives of those living in and managing a destination, who tend to see them as administrative entities, and the perception of actual or potential tourists which is less well defined and usually based on other criteria such as cultural spaces or landscape types that provide tourism facilities and services. Thus, destinations can be seen as virtual tourism products that are being shaped or jointly produced by a large variety of companies and other stakeholders (Bieger 2002). As such they are usually managed by destination management organisations (DMOs). However, destinations are not only the “place of production” of the tourism experience, but also the space where local people live and who are affected in different ways by tourism.

With this in mind, the concept of sustainable development is increasingly being applied to tourism destinations. So far, a large variety of approaches have been developed to assess the sustainability of tourism companies and tourism products, often in the form of certification schemes that usually imply an independent verification of compliance with defined criteria and eventually acknowledge this by a certificate or label. Worldwide, there is a large number of sustainable tourism certification systems, most of which relate to hotels or other accommodation businesses (Destinet 2014). There are very few that assess more complex tourism products, such as package tours, or tour operators that depend on long supply chains. The typically multi-stakeholder tourism destinations are even more complex, especially since a destination cannot be managed like a single company, but needs the consensus of stakeholders with (partially) conflicting interests. Therefore it comes as no surprise that certification schemes for sustainable tourism destinations have hardly been implemented so far (Rath 2012).


List of Articles
No. Subject Views Date
314 Think Tank XVI Challenges to attaining “Accessible Tourism for All” i... file 1284 Jul 01, 2016

Although the discussion on Accessible Tourism has increased in intensity over the past 20 years, and by now there are even a few examples of Good Practices being implemented, it nevertheless must be pointed out that this approach is not yet ...

Author: Andreas Kagermeier 

Year: 2016 

313 Think Tank XVI Values, Sustainability and Destination Choice Decision... file 1318 Jul 01, 2016

The sustainability concept has become popular after it was first used in almost three decades ago in what is now a renowned report, Our Common Future by Brundtland’s World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED 1987). Although much...

Author: Ercan Sirakaya-Turk, Seyhmuz Baloglu & Haywantee Rumi Ramkissoon 

Year: 2016 

312 Think Tank XVI Examining Corporate Social Responsibility in Tourism: ... file 565 Jul 01, 2016

One of the biggest challenges facing the tourism industry and policy makers is the emerging and fast growing ‘sharing economy’. Keeping abreast of this, disruptive but potentially transformative phenomenon has been challenging for industry,...

Author: Stephen Wearing & Kevin Lyons 

Year: 2016 

311 Think Tank XVI In Search of a New Mindset to Underpin Tourism Develop... file 1060 Jul 01, 2016

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of all tourism stakeholders adopting sustainability attitudes and practices, with a huge descriptive and prescriptive literature highlighting ‘best practice’, things seem to be getting worse....

Author: Larry Dwyer & Verity Anne Greenwood 

Year: 2016 

310 Think Tank XVI New approach on creating shared value in corporate soc... file 1097 Jul 01, 2016

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) to manage environmental, social and economic impacts has been widely researched in tourism. However, there is criticism of the lack of non-western, local perspectives in tourism planning and management,...

Author: Gabrielle McGinnis & Tamara Young & Mark Harvey 

Year: 2016 

309 Think Tank XVI The Influences of Hotel Contexts on Tourist Behaviour.... file 602 Jul 01, 2016

Sustainability deals with the relation between people and their environment. The configuration of this connection and the communication between the two are decisive when talking about a socially acceptable, ecologically compatible and econo...

Author: Stefan Raich 

Year: 2016 

308 Think Tank XVI Empowering communities and enabling conservation: Revi... file 666 Jul 01, 2016

The Africa Foundation a non-profit organization was founded in 1992 when Conservation Corporation Africa (since renamed and rebranded to &Beyond) was founded in South Africa. A central principle of the Conservation Corporation, safari l...

Author: Kevin Mearns 

Year: 2016 

307 Think Tank XVI United we stand, divided we fall: Strategies for engag... file 650 Jul 01, 2016

Many tourism corporate responsibility programs require the support and/or compliance of guests or customers, yet little attention has been paid to the design of strategies to encourage this compliance. Research in the areas of tourist inter...

Author: Karen Hughes & Gianna Moscardo 

Year: 2016 

OPA: 2016 Outstanding Paper Award Winner 

306 Think Tank XVI Influencing sustainability through engagement in polic... file 825 Jul 01, 2016

The ability of businesses to influence the sustainability of tourism development is generally examined from two standpoints: the regulatory frameworks requiring particular actions with respect to how business is carried out, or to clients; ...

Author: Valentina Dinica 

Year: 2016 

305 Think Tank XVI Volunteering and donations for biodiversity conservati... file 420 Jul 01, 2016

In 2010, the newly elected government of New Zealand, of neo-liberal orientation, has adopted its Business Growth Agenda. This has been implemented through a series of legal, policy and organizational changes, affecting the governance of th...

Author: Valentina Dinica 

Year: 2016 

304 Think Tank XV Inclusive tourism business models: A comparative analy... file 3373 Jul 27, 2015

Mitchell and Ashley state that the “bulk of pro-poor tourism literature has not aimed at measuring impact… [and] is indeed recognized as a weakness in the pro-poor tourism literature by its proponents” (2010:5). The research paper aims to qu...

Author: Andrew Rylance 

Year: 2015 

303 Think Tank XV The role of interpretation in mindfulness/mindlessness... file 3587 Jul 27, 2015

Cultural tourism is recently receiving increasing attention from southern African countries (The South African National Heritage and Cultural Tourism Strategy, 2012; Van Veuren, 2001). Cultural tourism is promoted as a local development stra...

Author: Haretsebe Manwa, Dudu Boemah & Emile Coetzee 

Year: 2015 

302 Think Tank XV Environmental beliefs and feelings toward nature among... file 4177 Jul 27, 2015

Tourists are often depicted as irresponsible consumers, with mass tourism being linked to extensive consumerism in society (Sharpley, 2012; Singh, 2012)and tourists as consumers are part of the “culture-ideology of consumerism” (Higgins-Desb...

Author: Elizabeth Ann Kruger 

Year: 2015 

301 Think Tank XV A vacation from capitalism; what happens when the ‘mas... file 6243 Jul 27, 2015

Philosophical and theoretical debates in tourism must be situated not just within economic and cultural contexts, but also political and social ones (Ataljevic, Pritchard & Morgan, 2007). Tourism is more than an ‘industry,’ Freya Higgins...

Author: Amy Savener 

Year: 2015 

300 Think Tank XV Lifelong learning for guiding and interpretation file 2948 Jul 27, 2015

Scholarship on guiding and interpretation positions formal training as a central factor in guide instruction. Guide training operates in the area that mediates between personal characteristics, attitudes and knowledge of the guides and what ...

Author: Julia N. Albrecht & Trisha Dwyer 

Year: 2015 

299 Think Tank XV Can we eat it? Exploring the cultural challenges in ma... file 2831 Jul 27, 2015

Can we eat it? How did you stop the waves? Is there water in there? Where is the switch to turn it off? Will it eat me? These are just some of the many questions asked by visitors to uShaka Sea World in Durban, South Africa. While South Afri...

Author: Judy Mann & Roy Ballantyne & Jan Packer 

Year: 2015 

298 Think Tank XV The role of souvenir vendors in the cultural sustainab... file 2741 Jul 27, 2015

The research investigated the role of souvenir vendors in sustaining the social-cultural authenticity of Chichen Itza’s host community, a Mexican UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) (UNESCO, 2015a). The case study evaluated the Maya-descent ven...

Author: Ady Milman 

Year: 2015 

297 Think Tank XV Luxury and Sustainability in Tourism Accommodation – a... file 3274 Jul 27, 2015

This paper examines the relationship between luxury and sustainability in tourism using a case study of the Soneva Group, which has two luxurious eco resorts in Maldives and Thailand. The aim of this paper is to determine whether luxury and ...

Author: Derek Robbins & Justyna Gaczorek 

Year: 2015 

296 Think Tank XV Conserving biodiversity as tourism (including wildlife... 3257 Jul 27, 2015

Governments throughout Australia and elsewhere recognise that tourism is an important sector of the economy, and are encouraging its growth in a variety of ways, some more environmentally sound than others. This papers presents not the resul...

Author: Ronda J Green 

Year: 2015 

295 Think Tank XV Perceptions of the business community on the sustainab... file 7227 Jul 27, 2015

The holiday property market has seen a genuine boom in the last years with second homes being an integral part of today’s tourism and an important pillar in the accommodation sector. Today second homes are seen as an enabler for destination ...

Author: Anita Zehrer 

Year: 2015 

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