Sustainable Tourism in Practice: Promoting or Perverting the Quest for a Sustainable Development?

Carlo Aall
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Carlo Aall: Western Norway Research Institute, P.O. Box 163, 6851 Sogndal, Norway

Sustainability, 2014, vol. 6, issue 5, 1-22

Abstract: Sustainable tourism has achieved the status of being the superior goal in Norwegian government tourism policy, and is attaining much attention in the international scientific and political discourse on tourism. However, have policies on sustainable tourism and related concepts actually managed to make tourism more sustainable? This article seeks to address this question by first presenting the history of sustainable tourism and related concepts, and specifically analyzing how the triple bottom line approach has influenced the prevailing understanding of the concept of sustainable tourism. The article concludes by claiming that prevailing EU as well as Norwegian national policies aiming to make tourism more sustainable most likely will result in “sustaining tourism” more than actually making tourism more sustainable. The article uses Norway—the “home of the Brundtland report”—as an illustrative case for the discussion.

Keywords: sustainable tourism; triple bottom line approach; transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:6:y:2014:i:5:p:2562-2583:d:35633

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