Tourist sustainability of destination as a measure of its development

Abstract

The traditional understanding of geographical space as a given place is now insufficient. It should be analysed in a wider context of social, cultural, economic and environmental aspects as well as psychological and emotional factors. It signifies that also a tourist destination, which is of geographical character, should be studied as a set of similar factors. In this respect, a given destination is characterized by particular complexity and multi-dimensionality, which generate an ontological question concerning its nature. On the other hand, including the whole complexity of destinations, an epistemological issue concerning the possibility of their cognition remains open. Taking into account these considerations, a research problem related to the nature destinations as well as the possibility of their development has been formulated. The problem is followed by the hypothesis, which assumes that the measure of tourist development of destinations is the achievement of the state of tourist sustainability. Wherein the tourist sustainability is understood as an advantage of benefits gained from tourism over the costs of its development. In the empirical part of the paper, a method for assessment of development of destinations has been presented. This relies on social constructionist foundations and is related to the model of sustainable tourism whose assumptions have been applied as theoretical bases. The method itself was positively tested in an actual environment of five tourist towns and can be treated as a universal tool for measuring the state of tourist sustainability (unsustainability) of different destinations and in consequence, it can constitute a useful device for the management of tourist areas.

Keywords:

• tourist destination
• sustainability
• development
• social constructionism
• empirical testing
• five Polish tourist centres

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A detailed description of the model of sustainable tourism, which was used as a theoretical basis for the research was presented in Butowski (2014b).

2. The idea of a proposed working matrix refers to the “Ellis curve” and its adjacent matrixes presented in Wolfe (1982), although it was elaborated independently by the author of the paper.

3. Respondents were interviewed by third-year students of tourism from the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Faculty of Environmental Studies and the University of Radom (Faculty of Transport).