RESOURCES
RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS
| Author : | Larry Dwyer, Liz Fredline, Leo Jago & Margaret Deery |
|---|---|
| School/Work Place : | University of New South Wales, Australia, (Larry Dwyer), Victoria University, Australia (Liz Fredline, Leo Jago, Margaret Deery) |
| Contact : | l.dwyer@unsw.edu.au |
| Year : | 2006 |
For tourism development to have sustainable outcomes at the destination level, business operations must be sustainable. Sustainable development for business means adopting strategies and activities that meet the needs of the enterprise and its stakeholders today while protecting, sustaining, and enhancing the human and natural resources that will be needed in the future. The sustainable business has interdependent economic, social and environmental objectives. and understands that long-term viability depends on integrating all three objectives in decision-making. Rather than regarding social and environmental objectives as costs, a sustainable enterprise seeks opportunities for profit in achieving these goals.
Perhaps the best known framework for measuring and reporting corporate performance against economic, social and environmental parameters is the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) approach. Ironically, despite a substantial literature on issues relating to ‘sustainable tourism’ the relevance of TBL has gone largely unnoticed. (Dwyer 2005). Recently, however, there has been a resurgence of interest by tourism researchers in operationalising tourism ‘yield’, based on recognition that access to ‘high yield’ tourists is an important aspect of business strategies to maintain and enhance destination tourism competitiveness. Although this tourism literature has not, as yet, been linked to TBL in any comprehensive way, it does appear to be very relevant for a major problem faced by the TBL approach, that is, operationalising the social and environmental effects of business activities.
This paper has three aims. First, it discusses the link between the development of indicators of tourism ‘yield’ and the development of indicators for TBL reporting. Second, it highlights the results of the authors’ attempts to develop financial, social and environmental measures of tourism yield. Third, it discusses the challenges faced in converting these independent measures into an overall measure or index of ‘sustainable yield’ consistent with TBL reporting.
