Sustainable Tourism Development: An Annotated Bibliography

SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
DEVELOPMENT
Student Name

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Executive Summary
Sustainable tourism is one way of travelling in which people explore places or
destinations while respecting its environment, culture and people. The following annotated
bibliography has been prepared after analysing four peer reviewed research articles
comprising detail analysis of the proposed topic which is changing perspectives on
sustainable tourism development. All the five articles selected presents different view points
generated from the research and analysis made by the authors using methodologies that suited
proposed research topics within each article. Most of the articles used consists content
analysis method along with mixed methodology where both quantitative and qualitative data
are analysed and interpreted in graphical and statistical way. The articles use various
synonyms for sustainable tourism like alternative tourism, responsible tourism, low impact
tourism, ecotourism, and so on.
The community involvement is emphasised in the articles that not only utilises
tourism destinations resources, but also benefits out of it along with managing the resources.
Hence, local community are also referred as local agents of environment protection within
tourism industry. Alongside representing preservation, these communities are also
responsible for maintaining sustainable practices in host regions to implement various
responsible tourism related practices. Government and environment protection institutions
play a significant role in managing sustainable tourism practices as they remain in charge for
implementing prevention and conservation acts and code of conducts. In literature, it is found
that many researchers criticised upon social-cultural and overcrowded tourists impacts in
tourism destinations and demanded a structured way to enable conservation and protection of
cultural heritage, beach destinations, places with exotic views and trekking sites, etc.

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Striving for economic, social and cultural sustainability in regards to conservation
recommends communities to not only remains environmentally concerned, but even show
apprehension towards endangered species that are kept in national parks, zoo and museums.
Since tourism act as a part of culture in many places, there is a strong contradiction seen
between enhancing tourism sustainability in one side and conserving culture, heritage and
local demands on the other. However, the change in perspective towards sustainable tourism
reveals that though sustainable development can be of any form, tourism development must
incorporate available natural resources, social responsibility and economic considerations
which can benefit both society as well as the tourism destinations.
Innovation and behavioural exploration can be the ultimate solution to the issues
identified like disruptive impacts on the lives of residents and economic catastrophes within
host countries. Consequently, a well-planned and ethically drafted tourism practice can
potentially provide communities with positive impacts like access to revenue generation,
education, infrastructure development, health services and diversified livelihoods. If
consumers or tourists behave in an ethical manner, communication and marketing campaigns
can further provide necessary information that can further help in correcting their behaviour
which might potentially create scope for sustainable tourism development.