Research Background

Tourism has progressed into being enormously important for both developing and developed countries not only for its economic benefits but also for the positive impacts it can contribute to the environment, society and culture. World tourism continues to enjoy phenomenal growth rates despite numerous setbacks. However, tourism does possess the potential to destroy the very environment on which it is dependent on. The negative impacts of tourism on the environment is at a heightened stage due to the imminent threats that climate change is presenting for the industry, the growth in outbound tourism from the emerging economies of China, India, Russia and Brazil and the threats these tourists will pose to the environment. It is also a clear reality that due to improper tourism planning and management many destinations have already experienced damage to their environments some of which are irreversible.

Attempts at managing the sustainability of destinations include indicator development, monitoring, eco-labelling, codes of conduct, educating the tourist and other best practices. Most of these attempts have been identified as having a “lack of quality, technical content, reliability, maturity, equity and effectiveness” (Buckley, 2001 cited in van der Duim & van Marwijk, 2006, p. 449). Additionally, most of the work on sustainable tourism has focused on theorising and policy formulation and the remaining challenge is finding practical tools for tourism professionals to implement the theory of sustainable tourism.

What emerges from the above is an awareness of the complexity and number of variables involved in seeking to model tourism activities and impacts. This research adopts a destination focused perspective and proposes that the application of ICT to sustainable tourism can be the practical tool that tourism professionals require in adopting a more pragmatic approach to managing the sustainable tourism development of destinations.

Reference:

van der Duin, R. & van Marwijk, R. (2006). The implementation of an environmental management system for Dutch tour operators: an actor-network perspective. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 14, 449-472.

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