Tourism is one of the world's largest industries and one of its fastest growing economic sectors. At the same time, it has many negative outsourced effects. As a response to the negative impacts of global mass tourism, slow progress on realizing sustainable tourism, stakeholders in a number of regions have adopted another form of tourism to achieve sustainable tourism development: Responsible Tourism.
"Responsible Tourism" aims to address the economic, social and environmental issues raised by tourism, and those issues that can be alleviated by tourism. This form of tourism differs from traditional approaches to sustainable tourism by asking individuals, organisations and businesses to take responsibility for their actions to make tourism more sustainable. "Responsible Tourism" is the first book to draw together the disparate strands of thinking, action and applied research to provide a critical account of the origin of this movement, its development and impacts. In doing so the book contributes to a better understanding of this growing movement in the sustainable tourism development debate. Built on a strong theoretical framework, the book addresses the "Why responsible tourism?" question, explores how responsible tourism is implemented, what impacts it has had on tackling economic, social and environmental issues, draws together conclusions about the efficacy of responsible tourism, and sets a future research agenda.
The book integrates both theory and original case studies from developing and developed regions to show practical insights into how responsible tourism has been implemented. Written by a leading authority, this book is valuable reading for students, academic and practitioners interested in tourism impacts and sustainable tourism development.