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What is Sustainable Tourism?

by USAID — last modified 2007-03-20 15:49

Contributors: Jean Brennan

The UN-World Tourism Organization (UN-WTO) has defined sustainable tourism as an enterprise that achieves an effective balance between the environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects of tourism development in order to guarantee long-term benefits to recipient communities. According to UN-WTO, it should:

Make optimal use of environmental resources that constitute a key element in tourism development, maintaining essential ecological processes, and helping to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity.

Respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, conserve their built and living cultural heritage and traditional values, and contribute to inter-cultural understanding and tolerance.

Ensure viable, long-term economic operations, providing socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders that are fairly distributed, including stable employment and income-earning opportunities and social services to host communities, and contributing to poverty alleviation.

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What is Sustainable Tourism?