Tourism and Sustainable Development Indicators: The Gap between Theoretical Demands and Practical Achievements

Abstract This paper outlines the historical context in which indicators appeared, and links this to the need for improving information systems. The conclusions are made with particular regard for emerging issues, the most recent of which is that of sustainable development. Owing to the rather low reliability of data and to the difficulty in defining the limits of tourism as an economic activity, articulating sets of sustainable development indicators (SDIs) appears to be even more difficult for tourism than for other industry sectors. Recent and current attempts show a great variety of methods and results. They relate in particular to • the various demands placed on the data, • the geographical scale to which the indicators refer and • the type of policy called upon to foster sustainable development: public policy, self-regulation, etc. The results indicate that a certain set of issues raised by sustainable development are privileged while others are left aside. This underscores the need to review the more theoretical aspects of sustainable development debates within practical attempts to build indicators.