Sustainable tourism: A state‐of‐the‐art review

Abstract The topic of sustainable tourism has emerged in the last decade as a result of discussions from the report Our Common Future. This paper reviews the development of the term, beginning with a discussion of the confusion arising from the imprecise and conflicting definitions of the concept, and the need to distinguish between sustainable tourism and the development of tourism on the principles of sustainable development. The paper then reviews the environmental focus of discussions of sustainable tourism and argues for the need to ensure that the concept includes and is applied to the human environment as well as the physical environment. Attention then shifts to problems of carrying capacity, control of tourism development, and the relevance of the term to mass or conventional tourism. The paper concludes with a discussion of the future direction of sustainable tourism and the likelihood of development moving in this direction.