On the road to sustainable tourism?

The year 2017 was the ”International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development" but it did not receive much attention. The article considers the missing breakthrough of sustainable tourism, which is ascribed partly to the lack of concretization of what sustainable tourism implies. They further write:

‘’ Most often, focus is on economic sustainability and, to a lesser extent, social, cultural, political and environmental sustainability. Although focusing on a limited number of parameters, there are challenges in relation to, for example, monitoring, valuation, regulation or otherwise acting in accordance with sustainability criteria.’’ They suggest that the solution to the problem requires both local and holistic perspectives on sustainability, which implies knowledge of local conditions, as well as sustainability being viewed beyond shortsighted economic perspectives.

The article goes on to discuss elements of sustainable tourism with development potential in Africa, what exactly tourism implies to the local communities, as well as the challenges and initiatives that achieving sustainable tourism necessarily entails.
The article is in Danish, and can be read here.