Sustainable tourism innovation: Challenging basic assumptions

Gianna Moscardo (2008)

The concept of sustainable tourism development (STD) has become the focus of increasing
attention amongst tourism theorists and practitioners alike (Sharpley, 2000). The economic
importance of tourism alone is reason enough for an ongoing examination of the meaning and
implementation of STD, following from the popularization of the general concept of sustainable
development (SD) in the late 1980s (WCED, 1987). The author has considered a different aspect
of the topic by assuming that tourism cannot be sustainable in its own right but acts as one
among many SD options of some regions, which eventually introduces an innovation in tourism
development.
Starting with citing a number of definitions of innovation given by other researchers, Moscardo
drew a conclusion that all innovations are actually on the basis of discovering an alternative
viewpoint of existing assumptions by applying creative thinking techniques. In other words,
innovation is the generation, acceptance and implementation of new ideas, processes, products or
services. Acceptance and implementation is central to this definition; it involves the capacity to
change and adapt (Kanter, cited from Hall & Williams (2008) p5).
She also looks into the debate about the value of tourism for communities in rural and
peripheral areas. It has now become something of a truism to say that tourism is a significant tool
for regional development. (Hall, 2007). One person's holiday is another person's livelihood.
Tourism creates jobs and wealth. International tourism is also a source of foreign exchange. Not
surprisingly tourism is viewed favorably by central and local governments, in both developed
and developing countries, as a basis for national and especially regional development (B
Goodall, 1987). Unfortunately, the sad reality is that tourism has also frequently failed to deliver
what has been promised as it is often given only a cursory examination by those in regional
planning and public policy analysis, while the tourism literature itself often fails to place tourism
in its broader economic and social environment. (Hall, 2007)
Moreover, STD remains the subject of vigorous debate. Concept of sustainable tourism is much
more about the continuity of tourism than it is about the contribution of tourism to sustainable
outcomes (Coccossis, 1996; Stabler, 1997). Moreover, tourism has had its ups and downs and
whilst at the world scale it has survived successive oil crises and the economic recession of the
early 1980s, for particular destination regions the outcome may be less favorable. The implicit
assumption amongst many government officials and even certain sectors of the tourism industry
that “once a tourist destination, always a tourist destination” needs to be questioned. (B Goodall,
1987)
Such definitions fall primarily within two categories: those which are tourism-centric (Hunter,
1995), focusing on sustaining tourism as an economic activity, and those which consider tourism
as an element of wider SD policies (Cronin, 1990). Sustainable tourism has also been referred to
as an “adaptive paradigm”, encompassing a set of meta-principles within which several different
development pathways may be legitimized according to circumstance (Hunter, 1997).
Predominant STD paradigm which is overly tourism-centric and parochial results in the fact that
practical measures designed to operationalize “Sustainable tourism” are failing to address many
of the issues critical to the concept of SD more generally, and may even actually work against
the general requirements of SD. Thus, an inappropriate tension is emerging between the general
SD and the specific STD. For further details, the author listed 3 consequences of the confusion
between sustainable tourism and tourism as a part of SD: separation tourism from other
activities; regarding community as a resource for tourism rather than vice versa and
disempowerment of the local in tourism development and management. After that, the question
is that what sorts of resources tourism may contribute to SD, Holmefjord (2000) puts forward 3
types of synergies between tourism and other economic activities, namely product synergies,
market synergies and marketing synergies.
Finally, a series of criteria to evaluate tourism development are compiled in this paper before
the importance of knowledge mangement systems is highlighted as a prominent factor to
stimulate innovation in tourism.
REFERENCES
Moscardo, Gianna. “Sustainable Tourism Innovation: Challenging Basic Assumptions.” Tourism
and Hospitality Research, vol. 8, no. 1, 2008, pp. 4–13.
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Hunter, Colin J. "On the need to re‐conceptualise sustainable tourism development." Journal of
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Goodall, Brian. "Tourism and regional development." Built Environment 13.2 (1987): 69.
Hall, C. Michael. "North-south perspectives on tourism, regional development and peripheral
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