The Practice of Sustainable Tourism ─ Resolving the Paradox

Sustainable tourism is a widely used term that has accumulated considerable attention from researchers and policy makers over the past two decades. However, there is still an apparently wide gap between theory and practice in the area. Recent scholarly research has tended to focus on niche areas of alternative tourism rather than address the broader issues and vagaries and paradoxes that appear to plague the broader notion of sustainable tourism. As such, there is a need for a new and pragmatic analysis of sustainable tourism as an overarching idea and how this manifests in practice.

The Practice of Sustainable Tourism fulfils this need by offering a fresh perspective on sustainable tourism as an umbrella concept with inherent tensions. It presents a way of thinking about tourism based on the notion of finding common ground using the dialectic tradition of philosophy. Dialectics focusses on resolving opposing viewpoints by recognising they have common elements that can be combined into a rational and practical solution over time. As part of this approach, the book examines the strongly apparent tensions within alternative tourism as well as the paradox of continuing growth and other mass tourism related issues. It is divided into three parts, Part I includes chapters discussing the general concept of sustainable tourism, its history, current status and possible futures; Part II includes a range of destination case studies exploring how sustainable tourism has been applied and Part III includes perspectives from the tourism operator view.

Given the international content and challenging themes, the book will be appealing internationally to students, researchers and academics in the fields of tourism, geography, sustainability and social science.

Michael Hughes is a senior lecturer in Environmental Science at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia. He has a background in environmental science, natural resource management and sustainable tourism.

David Weaver is Professor of Tourism Research in Griffith University’s Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management on the Gold Coast of Australia, specialising in sustainable tourism, ecotourism and destination development dynamics.

Christof Pforr is Course Coordinator for Tourism & Hospitality and Group Leader of the Research Focus Area ‘Sustainable and Health Tourism’ with the School of Marketing, Curtin University, Western Australia. His main research interests include tourism policy and planning, sustainable (tourism) development, health tourism, coastal tourism and geotourism as well as destination governance with a specific focus on network management and network analysis.