Re-calling [forth] sustainable tourism

(#GreenShift #1)

While the green shift is becoming more and more popular, it is worthy reviewing briefly how sustainable tourism reached its current maturation.

In the last 3-2 decades of the last century a then limited number of ecological pioneers left the circuit of the tourism industry (mass tourism on the mountains, sea&sand). From the eighties the phenomenon began to grow, and eco-tourism, responsible tourism, jungle-tourism began to conquer a significant niche. Since then, sustainable tourism has turned from a niche to the fastest growing tourism sub-sector.

Ecotourism represents a cultural change in the needs of tourists, who are increasingly aware of the environmental impact that their presence generates and that in increasing numbers consider a holiday spent in the nature a fully satisfactory form of tourism. Ecotourism is part of sustainable tourism, and often the two terms are used synonymously. However, it should be remembered that the urban environment is also an ecosystem, therefore sustainability is to be practiced in urban tourist destinations. In 1995 the World Tourism Organization (OMT) defined sustainable tourism as the development of a way of doing tourism that meets the needs of today's tourists and destinations, while protecting and increasing the opportunities for the future. Sustainability understood in this way must be applied to the environment, the socio-cultural sphere and the economy.

This implies making optimal use of environmental resources, the cornerstone of a sustainable tourism system, while keeping intact the fundamental ecological processes, biodiversity and the cultural reality embedded in them.

Sustainable tourism focuses on the protection of the socio-cultural authenticity of the host communities, both in terms of material assets, monuments, artistic artefacts, and in terms of traditional values and lifestyles. Through protection and respect, the mechanisms of tolerance and intra-cultural understanding can be triggered, one of the purposes of the tourism industry as a whole.

As for economic sustainability, the benefits of tourist presence must fall on the territory that hosts it, creating jobs and business opportunities, social services and contributing to the alleviation of poverty.

The temporal perspective is both intra-generation and inter-generations: preserving tourist goods means ensuring that not only well-being for today, but for future generations. One of the risks of overtourism (https://sustainableexperience.blogspot.com/2020/06/depopulated-destinations-since-when.html) is that it leads to the depletion of the tourist resource (e.g. coral reef, or damage to artistic property), compromising its attractiveness in the long term.