Employing 260 million people and generating 10.7% of world’s GDP,
Tourism is the largest as well as the fastest industry of the world. Bigger
planning and management is in dire need to control the tourism industry, and
more important, to protect and conserve the biodiversity of tourist places.
Dealing predominantly with such serious issues, sustainable tourism comes in
great handy, as it is all about conserving the resources, valuing the local
culture and tradition and, contributing largely in economy. What is Sustainable Tourism? Sustainable tourism is a kind of approach to tourism meant to make the development of tourism ecologically supportable in the long term. The very importance of sustainable tourism lies in its motives to conserve the resources and increase the value of local culture and tradition. Sustainable tourism is a responsible tourism intending to generate employment and income along with alleviating any deeper impact on environment and local culture.
Characteristics of Sustainable Tourism
- Sustainable Tourism tries its utmost to maintain the importance of local culture and tradition.
- Sustainable Tourism is informatory, as it doesn’t only let tourist know about the destinations but also it helps locals knowing about the culture and civilisation of tourists.
- This kind of tourism is aimed to conserve the resources of destinations where one is visiting to
- Sustainable Tourism seeks deeper involvement of locals, which provide local people an opportunity and make their living. Above all, Sustainable Tourism stresses pointedly upon integrity of the tourist places.
With
the increased footfalls of tourists, the deep need today is that tourism
like other sector be planned and managed suitably. Sustainable development
of tourism is possible only if its follows some of its guidelines and
principles. - Tourism ought to be initiated at any location with the help of local community. The involvement of local community helps maintaining the appropriate tourism development.
- The local community has to meet the direct benefit of flourishing tourism in their area. Link between local business and tourism enable local people gain economically as well.
- To cause large growth in sustainable development, there is need that codes, ethics and some fair guidelines be appointed.
- In order to heighten the importance of heritage and natural resources, and manage them better, training and education programme should be instituted.
Ecotourism basically deals with nature based tourism, and is aimed “to conserve the environment and improves the well-being of local people”. On the other hand, sustainable tourism includes all segments of tourism, and has same function to perform as of ecotourism – to conserve the resources and increase the local cultural and traditional value. Though the goals of ecotourism and sustainable tourism is much similar, but the latter is broader and conceals within itself very many aspects and categories of tourism.
