World Tourism Organization defined tourism as the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business, and other purposes.
Tourism Industry is well developed from an insignificant activity to the current world’s largest industry since World War Two. In developed countries, people travelling domestically as well as travelling to less developed countries had increased.
Since tourism industry had increased tremendously, as a result, tourism industry had become one of the industries which strongly influence an economy of a country. Therefore, individual countries had to develop more attractions to sustain tourism.
Hence, key concepts of sustainable development and sustainable tourism, values and ethics of sustainable tourism and the needs of sustainability shall be discussed in this essay.
Sustainable Development is an industry that aims to meet the needs of the people while protecting the environment, meeting the needs not only for the present, but also the ability to meet future generation’s needs.
As mentioned, tourism industry has been increasing over the years as more people are interested to spend their time in nature. As a result, ecotourism has become the one of the fastest growing sector in the tourism industry. Greater numbers of tourist make it more likely that natural attractions and wilderness habitats will be at risk.
Therefore, officials in charge for these areas will have to shoulder a huge responsibility for handling challenges and to decide how tourism development can be sustained over long term. Proper Planning is very important for sustainable development as planners must know the importance that consumers’ resources will creates waste and require certain kinds of infrastructure. It creates an issue over consumption of resources. Private investments take this opportunity to maximize its profits. This multi-faceted nature makes control tough. The challenge of sustainable development faced is to balance these facts and it can only be done only through integrated, cooperative approaches involving all directors and related activities in the area. Ecotourism create opportunities for villages, remote areas and natural resources as long as government aims to increase the numbers of tourist in these attractions and locals do participate in the process.
Values
There are values in Tourism which may allow to sustaining tourism and locals to lead a better future. Therefore, locals and tourist playing a part to sustain tourism are crucial.
Economic sustainability
Economic sustainability is focusing on improving the living standard of the locals and activities is properly maintained in the long term, creating opportunities in tourism, leisure and regeneration.
Ecotourism is usually calculated as the economic value added in relation to its aggregated ecological impact. This idea has been popularized by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) under the following definition: “ Eco-efficiency is achieved by the delivery of competitively-priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity throughout the life-cycle to a level at least in line with the earth’s carrying capacity.” (Desimone and Popoff, 1997: 47)
Ecotourism and social sustainability are working closely together to achieve an increase economic sustainability. In the process, both natural and social capitals were used to aim to benefit from a win-win situation.
Social Sustainability
Social sustainability has a focus on understanding human rights and provides equal opportunities in the society, recognizing and respecting individual cultures and avoids exploitation.
Social sustainability shows the relation between a company’s value added and its social impact. These can be either positive or negative. Corporate giving and creation of employment are examples of positive relations and accidents in workplace, mobbing of employees, abusing human rights are negative examples. The types of impact on socio-efficiency either try to minimize negative social impacts or maximize positive social impacts.
Environment Sustainability
Environmental sustainability is the process on conserving and managing resources, especially resources that are non renewable, making sure current processes of interaction with the environment are pursued with the idea of keeping the environment as naturally as possible based on ideal-seeking behavior.
Unsustainable situation occurs when natural resources are used up faster than it replenished. Sustainability requires human’s activities only uses natural resources necessary, at a rate that natural resources can be replenished naturally.
Sustainable Tourism
Sustainable Tourism is an industry which committed to obtain a low impact on the local culture and environment, while helping to boost the economy and decrease the unemployment rate for the locals. Sustainable Tourism is a continual process of improvement, ensuring a positive experience for Travel Agencies, tourists and even locals themselves and also applies in cities, resorts, rural and protected areas. Sustainable Tourism aims to conserve the environment while boosting economy, obtaining environmental benefits and socio-cultural.
Sustainable Tourism not only allows tourist to have a better knowledge about the country they are visiting but also helps locals to learn about tourists’ culture. Sustainable Tourism expects the participations from the locals, which also provide locals an opportunity to improve their living standard. Above all, Sustainable Tourism stresses pointedly upon integrity of the tourist places.
Tourism sector must be planned and managed suitably with the current and increasing numbers of tourist. Sustainable development of tourism is only possible when its follows its guidelines and principles.
Principles of Sustainable Tourism
Minimizing Environmental Impacts
Tourism should know the importance of both local and global environmental issues. Tourism should preserve the visual quality of landscapes and prevent having an impact on the environment by minimizing water, land, pollution of air and generation of waste. Tourism should also seek attention to matters like greenhouse gas emissions and usage of non-renewable resources.
Achieving Conservation Outcomes
Tourism should preserve natural resources like natural areas, habitats, wildlife and even using the profits from these resources to enhance the qualities to attract more tourists visiting the country. Such achievements not just attracting more tourists, but it also an instrument in telling a story and invoke an emotional response from tourists. Tourism and Conservation can be achieved from a mutually beneficial alliance.
Being One of a Kind
One of the keys factor to be a successful and sustainable tourism is to achieve a difference from other competing destinations. It can be obtained by developing and marketing on the strengths and attributes of the Country. Attractions that relevant to the culture, history, lifestyle and natural resources of the Country are most likely to be successful. As it can tell a story about the features of the attraction, as a result, providing a more rewarding experience to tourists while conserving natural resources of the destinations.
Community Values
Tourism is able to reflect community values which means, representing the present, past and future aspirations of the Country community in a living and dynamic way which preserve the past.
In order to obtain a richer tourism experience, adding values to current strengths is crucial, which include sales outlets or dining accommodation, in association with established industries.
Understanding and targeting the market
Understanding the needs, the broad market trends and expectations of specific segments is crucial which involves the development of specialized products based on the inherent attributes of an area.
Ethics Platform towards Tourism
Ethics which also know as moral philosophy is a philosophy which questions about morality, concepts such as good and bad, right and wrong and justice. Ethical are often to be subjective.
World Tourism Organization has published a global code for tourism but we are unable to view ethics on the basis of individual as we all have to understand, every individual have their own perspective.
Pro and Cons
Certainly, we are unable to correct people whom does not practice codes of ethics as they have their own believe, and people hates a third party to correct their believe. There are certain guidelines to allow people to practice good codes of ethics and people who practices good codes of ethics are definitely a role model to follow. Below are some examples of good code ethics and bad code of ethics.
Good codes
Gain commitment of leader in organization and front line workers. Offer clear statement of objectives, expectations, obligation and rules, a continuous flow of information and a resolution system which is transparent. Outline meaningful benefits for participation. State negative repercussions if principles are not complied with.
Bad codes
Not backed by action, lead to deceptive or misleading advertising, bring bad publicity, leading to a loss of consumer trust, discourage competition and encourage collusion, create an uneven playing field and attracts negative attention.
These are cases that people exploiting tourist just because they are unfamiliar with the area, taking advantage of the situation and aim to have an easy income; charging more than the market rate.
Implications
Tourism is one of huge industries that influence the global economy. Above, this essay had shown the importance to achieve sustainability in tourism with good codes of ethics. But in a global context, can it be accomplish? Is achieving sustainability in tourism for the benefits for everyone?
Government in individual country definitely will not allow other governments to take advantage of their own land and every government wants the best out of it. Therefore, if every government tends to have such mindset, it will only bring harm to their people and the economy. “ The Horns of the Dilemma” the Dilemma that one cannot solve both crises at once (Sachs’s 1999)
In Burma, Burmese are forced to make way for huge new tourism development from their home. In India, locals have to walk miles to get water just because of hotels build nearby siphon it off from the groundwater for their own excessive uses. “ Achieving sustainability may be unethical because it benefits some while the costs are born by others, usually the lower income groups or poorer nations” (Stabler 1997)
Adaptive paradigm
Sustainable tourism must be regarded as an adaptive paradigm that accommodates both weak and strong interpretations of the sustainable development idea. (Hunter 1997)
Weak sustainable tourism strategies which also know as anthropocentric approach, apply to environments like town areas where protection of natural habitat become irrelevant. Hotels, Resorts and Theme parks are modes of tourism which stresses on the word development in Sustainable development and it can be influenced by the Advocacy Platform.
Strong sustainable tourism strategies which also known as biocentric approach, is when even a small movement in tourism-related activity could cause an unacceptable environmental costs. According to Adaptancy platform, any form of action that consequences are unknown, should be avoided. This approach stresses on the word sustainable in Sustainable development and it can be influence by both, Advocacy Platform and Adaptancy Platform.
Conclusion
Tourism industry has now become one of an influential industry to the global economy and it is also the creator of jobs across the globe. To sustain tourism, sustainable developments and sustainable tourism are crucial and have to be well planned and managed, as these two elements play a big role to sustain tourism.
Everybody do also have a part to play to sustain tourism, they must all share a same vision to preserve the natural resources to meets the current and future generation needs. Government should host more programs to allow locals to understand the importance of protecting the resources that they have and not taking them for granted. Inconsiderate behavior should be minimize and practice good ethic behaviors.
Developers should consider for the locals, respecting their human rights when they are planning an investments and not purely ignore them. Locals should invite tourist with a smile in their country, giving them a good experience upon leaving the country, and not having the idea of making easy income. As this will only leaves a bad impression in tourist when leaving, making them thinking twice visiting into the country again.
With all people playing a part to this tourism industry, locals will only improve their living standards and people having a wider knowledge for individual culture and enjoying themselves without any worries even they are at an unfamiliar environment and last but not least, boosting the global economy.
