Skip to content
Sign InCreate Account
J
Search
Articles

Why Tourism Eludes the Grasp of Stakeholders? Some Reflections on Sustainability

Vanessa G. B. Gowreesunkar1, Masood A. Naqvi2, Tej Vir Singh2

1Business Education Department, Mauritius Institute of Education, Mauritius

2Centre for Tourism Research & Development, Lucknow, India

Published: November 11, 2017Pages: 5-14DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20464816CC BY 4.0
Open AccessPeer Reviewed
PDF

Abstract

The paradoxical attributes of tourism for being good and bad at a time makes it open for criticism. This paper questions whether this dualism is inherent in its character or is circumstantial. No stakeholder wants tourism to elude his grasp, why then it goes awry in many cases. To explain this phenomenon the paper takes a back view of the industry and underpins shortfalls that are responsible for its downturn. Barring nature catastrophes, spread of epidemics and war, etc., in most cases, tourism stakeholders were found at fault for ignoring essential tenets of sustainable development; they fall prey to avarice and compromise with short-term market forces resulting in negative consequences in physical and socio-cultural settings. The environment suffers often irreversibly. Mass tourism, weak community resilience, poor knowledge-equipment of stakeholders, aspect of seasonality, unskilled workforce, limited knowledge of ecological systems, policy failure and lack of governance and community inertia are some of the features that weaken tourism industry. Only a few but important features will be discussed in this paper. By comparing stakeholders’ good and bad practices at two mountain destinations, Whistler resort in Canada and Manali in the Indian Himalayas, the paper concludes that paradox in tourism is a myth; tourism is neither good nor bad, it is what stakeholders make of their recreational resources.

Keywords: sustainability; tourism industry; stakeholders; resilience; Manali; Whistler.

Article Details

Journal
Journal On Tourism & Sustainability (JOTS)
Issue
Volume 1, Issue 1, 2017
Section
Articles
Pages
5-14
DOI
10.5281/zenodo.20464816
Zenodo Record
https://zenodo.org/records/20464816
Published
November 11, 2017
Canonical URL
https://otsjournal.org/article/why-tourism-eludes-the-grasp-of-stakeholders-some-reflections-on-sustainability

References

  1. Assadurian, E. (2016). Re-engineering cultures to create a sustainable civilization. In Washington, H. and Twomey, P. (Eds.). A Future Beyond Growth: Towards a steady State Economy . London: Earthscan.
  2. Ateljevic, J. and Page, S. J. (2009). Tourism and Entrepreneurship: International Perspectives . Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann.
  3. Baddeley, J. and Font, X. (2011). Barriers to Tour Operator Sustainability Supply Chain Management. Tourism Recreation Research 36 (3): 205-214.
  4. Baum, T. (2006). Human Resource Management for Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure: An International Perspective . London: Thomson.
  5. Baum, T. and Lundtrop, S. (2001). Seasonality in Tourism . Amsterdam: Pergamon.
  6. Becken, S. and Khazai, B. (2017). Resilience, tourism and disaster. In R. W. Butler (ed). Tourism and Resilience (pp.96-104). Oxford: CABI.
  7. Boorstin, D. J. (1961). From Traveller to Tourist: The Lost Art of Travel (pp. 86–125). In the Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. Penguin: Harmondsworth.
  8. Britton, S. G. (1983). Tourism and Underdevelopment in Fiji. Monograph No. 31 . Canberra: ANU.
  9. Brundtland, G. H. (1987). Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  10. Butler, R. W. (1974). The social implications of tourist developments. Annals of Tourism Research 2: 100-111.
  11. Butler, R. W. (2001). Seasonality in Tourism: Issues and Implications. In Baum, T. and Lundtrop, S. (eds.) Seasonality in Tourism (pp. 5-21). Amsterdam: Pergamon.
  12. Butler, R. W. (2015). Sustainable Tourism – The Undefinable and Unachievable Pursued by the Unrealistic? In Singh, T. V. (Ed) Challenges in Tourism Research . Clevedon: Channel View.
  13. Butler, R. W. (2017). Tourism and Resilience . Oxford: CABI.
  14. Cater, C., Garrod, B., and Low, T. (Eds) (2015). The Encyclopedia of sustainable Tourism . Wallingford: CABI
  15. Ceballos-Lascurain, H. (1987). The future of ‘ecotourism’. Mexico Journal 13–14.
  16. Cohen, E. (1978). The Impact of tourism on the physical environment. Annals of Tourism Research 5, 215-237.
  17. Cooper, C. (2015). Transferring Tourism Knowledge: A Challenge for Tourism Educators and Researchers. In Singh, T. V. (eds) Challenges in Tourism Research (pp. 310-319). Bristol: CVP.
  18. Crick, M. (1996). Representations of International Tourism in the Social Sciences: Sun Sex, Sights, Saving, and Servility. In Apostolopoulos, Y., Leivadi, S. and Yiannakis, A. (Eds.) The Sociology of Tourism: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations (pp. 15–50). London: Routledge.
  19. Davis, D. E. (1978). Development and the tourism industry in the third world countries. Society and Leisure 1, pp. 301-322.
  20. De Araujo, L.M. and Bramwell, B. (2004). Stakeholder assessment and collaborative tourism planning: The case of Brazil’s Costa Dourada project. In B. Bramwell and B. Lane (eds.) Tourism Collaboration and Partnerships: Policies, Practice and Sustainability (pp. 272-294). Clevedon: CVP.
  21. Freeman, R.E. (1984). Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach . Boston: Pitman.
  22. Graburn, N. (ed) (1976). Ethnic and Tourist Arts: Cultural Expressions from the Fourth World . Barkley: University of California Press.
  23. Harrison D. and Sharpley, R. (2017). Mass Tourism in a Samll World . Boston: CABI.
  24. Hughes, J.C. and Rog, E. (2008). Talent Management: A Strategy for improving employee recruitment, retention and engagement within hospitality organizations. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 20(7), 743–758.
  25. Jamal, T. and Getz, D. (2000). The dialectics of consensus and process structures. In B. Bramwell and B. Lane (eds.) Tourism Collaboration and Partnerships: Policies, Practice and Sustainability (pp. 272-294). Clevedon: CVP.
  26. Lee-Ross, D. and Pryce, J. (2010). Human Resources and Tourism: Skills, Culture and Industry . Bristol: CVP.
  27. MacCannell, D. (1973). Staged Authenticty: Arrangments of social space in tourist settings. American Journal of Sociology 79(3): 589-603.
  28. Marzuki, A. and Hay, I. (2016). Stakeholder. In J. Jafari and H. Xiao (eds.) Encylopedia of Tourism – Volume 2, (pp. 896-898). Switzerland: Springer.
  29. McKercher, B. (2001). The Business of Ecotourism. In Weaver, D. (ed) The Encyclodepia of Ecotourism (pp.565-577). Wallingford: CABI.
  30. McLaren, D. (1998). Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel: The Paving of paradise and what you can do to stop it . West Hartford, USA: Kumarian Press.
  31. Muller, H. (1997). The Thorny Path to Suatianble Tourism Development. In France, L. (ed) Sustainable Tourism (pp. 29-35). London: Earthscan.
  32. Nash, D. (1978). Tourism as a form of Imperialism. In V. Smith (ed) Host and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism (Pp. 33-47). Oxford: Blackwell. nd
  33. Page, S. (2007). Tourism Management: Managing for Change (2 edition). Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann.
  34. Poon, A. (1993). Tourism, Technology and Competitive Strategies . Wallingford. CABI.
  35. Scott, N. (2015). A Market Approach to Tourism Knowledge. In T. V. Singh (ed.) Challenges in Tourism Research (pp. 324-331). Bristo: CVP.
  36. Sheppard, V. A. (2017). Resilience and destination governance: Whistler, BC. In R. W. Butler (Ed). Tourism and Resilience (pp.69-80). Oxford: CABI.
  37. Singh, T. V. (Ed.) (2012). Critical Debates in Tourism . Bristol: CVP.
  38. Singh, T. V. (2016). Tourism has no Future Except What People make of it? Keynote th delivered at 6 Asia Euro Conference, Gwalior, November 9-11, 2016.
  39. Smith, V. (1978). Hosts and Guests. Annals of Tourism Research 5: 274-277.
  40. Turner, V. (1982). From Ritual to Theatre: The Human seriousness of Play . New York: Performing Arts journal.
  41. Turner, L. and Ash, J. (1975). The Golden Horde: International Tourism and the Pleasure Periphery . London: Constable.
  42. UNWTO (2016). Tourism Highlights 2015 . Madrid: Spain.
  43. Weaver, D. (2012). Towards Sustainable Mass Tourism: Paradigm Shift or Paradigm Nudge?(pp.28–34). In Singh, T. V. (ed) Critical Debates in Tourism . Bristol: CVP.
  44. WTO (1998). Ecotourism now One-fifth of market. WTO News 1, p.6.
  45. Young, G. (1973). Tourism Blessing or Blight . London: Penguin. Corresponding Author: Corresponding Author: Tej Vir Singh, Corresponding Author: Corresponding Author: , , , Professor and founding Director of the Centre for Tourism Research & Development (CTRD), Lucknow, India; Fellow, International Academy for the Study of Tourism; Life Time Hony Professorship by BU, Jhansi, India; UNWTO Ulysses Laureate. Email: trrworld@gmail.com

Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided appropriate credit is given to the original author(s) and source, a link to the licence is provided, and changes are indicated.

Fees: JOTS does not charge submission charges, article processing charges, author fees, or publication fees.
Copyright: © 2017 OTS Academy