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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 Viewssort Date
7 Think Tank VI Corporate Social Responsibility in the Catalan hospita... file 75518 Oct 13, 2013

The practices of CSR have attracted the attention of the investigators, who have prepared a great diversity of theories and the international organisms, which have done recommendations, so that the companies have added them in their strategi...

Author: Ramon Palau 

Year: 2006 

» Think Tank XIV Development of a Certification System for Sustainable ... file 5448 Jun 27, 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 destina...

Author: Wolfgang Strasdas 

Year: 2014 

5 Think Tank V Ecolabels and Green Globe 21: Awareness and Consumer A... file 4116 Oct 13, 2013

A case in point is New Zealand, where tourism has long been recognised as an important economic force; this is aptly illustrated by the sector’s contribution of 9.6% to the country’s GDP in 2003 (TRCNZ, 2005). The resource at the heart of mu...

Author: Christian Schott 

Year: 2005 

4 Think Tank XI Learning for Sustainable Tourism: Small and Medium Ent... file 4022 Oct 14, 2013

This abstract intends to present QUSS – an integrated Management System for Quality, Sustainability and Safety in theory and practice. QUSS was invented by the NGO Ecocamping and is thus basically applied on camp sites in Europe with focus ...

Author: Tatjana Thimm 

Year: 2011 

3 Think Tank IV Evaluating Environmental Initiatives of German Hotels file 3301 Oct 13, 2013

Following a vigorous environmental protection movement trigging in Germany over thirty years ago, the German hotel industry is gradually moving in line with other sections of its society. This study attempts to present a snapshot of the asse...

Author: Joseph S. Chen, Willy Legrand, Philip Sloan & Josephine Zho 

Year: 2004 

2 Think Tank XI Sustainable Tourism Labels: A Suitable Tool for Consum... file 3142 Oct 14, 2013

In an attempt to encourage businesses making an effort to reduce the negative impacts of tourism, and to maximise the positive outcomes of this activity an extensive number of sustainable tourism labels were developed worldwide. It has been...

Author: Sofia Reino 

Year: 2011 

1 Think Tank XVIII Certification as a tool to identify sustainable touris... file 1354 Jan 07, 2019

Key words: Sustainable Tourism Products, Sustainable tourism certification schemes, Certification

Author: Martin Balas & Wolfgang Strasdas 

Year: 2018 

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