Discuss the Contention That Sustainable Tourism Is, Perhaps, an Impossible Dream.
Tourism is considered as a very important sector for most developing countries. It has been viewed as a source of both foreign currency and income for the natives. In this essay I will discuss the importance of tourism and whether it can be sustained, by first trying to represent how important tourism is to developing countries and then making a point how sustainable development can be different to sustainable tourism. I will discuss the problems of modern day tourism and will conclude whether sustainable tourism is possible.
The tourism industry has shown to be very important to most developing countries as a source of government revenue and therefore a chance to achieve economic growth and development. A successful tourism industry might mean, that the country’s unemployment rate will fall, as now there will be more job opportunities available. Therefore standards of living are likely to increase due to the fact that more jobs are provided, which indicates that the native population will have more disposable income available for spending. Therefore on the second Earth Summit in 1997 “Earth summit II” tourism was debated as a recognised economic sector (Holden, (2008).
Countries such as Jamaica, who continues to derive most of its foreign exchange from tourism, have remittances equivalent to tourism revenues accounting for nearly 20% of GDP (CIA, (2009)). This is an example of how important tourism can be to a developing country, which poses great physical natural beauty. Therefore the aim of its government should be to protect and sustain this habitat in order to keep the tourism industry alive. However, today’s situation of global recession for example threatens the country with an increase in unemployment as a decline in consumer confidence is expected during 2009, which will take its toll on demand for tourism (WTO, (2009)). Therefore the need to attract tourists brings us to the concept of sustainable development.
Sustainable development is a term
The tourism industry has shown to be very important to most developing countries as a source of government revenue and therefore a chance to achieve economic growth and development. A successful tourism industry might mean, that the country’s unemployment rate will fall, as now there will be more job opportunities available. Therefore standards of living are likely to increase due to the fact that more jobs are provided, which indicates that the native population will have more disposable income available for spending. Therefore on the second Earth Summit in 1997 “Earth summit II” tourism was debated as a recognised economic sector (Holden, (2008).
Countries such as Jamaica, who continues to derive most of its foreign exchange from tourism, have remittances equivalent to tourism revenues accounting for nearly 20% of GDP (CIA, (2009)). This is an example of how important tourism can be to a developing country, which poses great physical natural beauty. Therefore the aim of its government should be to protect and sustain this habitat in order to keep the tourism industry alive. However, today’s situation of global recession for example threatens the country with an increase in unemployment as a decline in consumer confidence is expected during 2009, which will take its toll on demand for tourism (WTO, (2009)). Therefore the need to attract tourists brings us to the concept of sustainable development.
Sustainable development is a term
References: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (2009) “The World Factbook: Jamaica” available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/jm.html as at 21st April 2009 Forsyth T. (2000) “What is Sustainable Tourism?”, available at: http://www.fathom.com/course/21701788/session1.html as at 21st April 2009 Holden A. (2008) Environment and tourism, Second edition, Abingdon, Routledge, p150-162 Department of Economic and Social Affairs: International Council on Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) (1999) “Tourism and sustainable development: sustainable tourism: a local authority perspective”, available at: http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/iclei.pdf as at 21st April 2009 Sustainabletourism (2009) “Sustainable tourism” available at: http://www.sustainabletourism.net/ as at 21st April 2009 World Tourism Organization (WTO) (2009) “World tourism barometer”, available at: http://www.unwto.org/facts/eng/pdf/barometer/UNWTO_Barom09_1_en_excerpt.pdf as at 21st April 2009