Planning for sustainable tourism

Tourism has promised, for the last thirty years, to deliver economic development for all, including new jobs and incomes in countries and regions with dismal economic potential, together with an individually satisfying varied set of enriching leisure activities. In addition, it would, as a by-product, usher in a new age of social harmony, world peace and understanding between peoples around the world. All this was to be achieved effortlessly and without cost by the one industry that had discovered the secret of eternal growth. The tourism industry clearly still believes its own promises, but has become reluctantly and slowly aware that, incredible though it seems, almost everyone else has growing doubts. It is the environmental lobby that now leads the sceptics, seeing tourism as a polluter and destroyer of physical environments. But they join a strong chorus of economists (tourism as the exploitation of the poor by the rich), social anthropologists (tourism the degrader of weak societies), the art and culture lobby (tourism the trivialiser), and increasingly, politicians. The penny has dropped (and it took an unseemingly long time falling) that not everyone loves the tourism industry with the same intensity of devotion that it