Conflicting limits to growth in sustainable tourism

Abstract

Sustainability has emerged as an important field of research with an emphasis on studying tourism impacts and defining the limits of growth in tourism. However, the conceptual foundation of sustainability and the limits to growth have been perceived as vague and their implementation in tourism operations has emerged as a difficult task. This research note aims to present two different perspectives on sustainability by utilizing an experimental pilot example (yellow-eyed penguins) to demonstrate how different theoretical conceptualizations are manifested in nature-based tourism operations.

Keywords:

• sustainable tourism
• nature-based tourism
• wildlife tourism
• limits to growth
• yellow-eyed penguins