Emerging tourist destinations can challenge ecological, economic, social, and quality of life barriers. These issues draw attention towards the consequences of increasing complexity that are often found as a tourist marketing system grows and evolves, particularly within the current climate of economic pressure combined with calls for more sustainable development. There is agreement that a sustainable approach to tourism development benefits the environment, the community and in the long term, the economy. However, the process of implementing more sustainable practices has been under-researched. This paper proposes a novel approach to study the World Heritage Listed tourist area, Ningaloo Marine Park (NMP), Western Australia. This study proposes how future research can trace the implementation of sustainable development within the region. Adopting a performative approach, there are three sources of issues that theory needs to address. These are first, the commercialization process, second NMP’s common pool resource characteristics and third NMP’s emerging destination status. This approach may help scholars, policy makers, planners and managers understand destination development policies in order to meet the challenges of sustainable tourism development.