![Sample our Built Environment journals, sign in here to start your access, Latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5926/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Built-Environment.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The lack of tourism development in Timor-Leste can be situated as an opportunity to build ‘from scratch’ an innovative and sustainable tourism sector that capitalises on the advantages of peripherality, including amenability to peak experiences, tourism centrality, opportunistic innovation, optimal autonomy and cultural/natural distinctiveness. As such, peripherality is positioned as a negotiable and negotiated construct. A resultant spatial framework for strategic development, in tandem with the principles of enlightened mass tourism, features tourism sub-systems with core growth poles, cultural hinterlands with community-responsive tourism and nature-based hinterlands, both terrestrial and marine, that emphasise visitor participation in site enhancement. These initiatives can inform sustainable tourism development in other incipient destinations or be used to recalibrate tourism in more-developed destinations.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
David Weaver is Professor of Tourism Research at Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. He is the author or co-author of more than 150 journal articles, books and book chapters, and specialises in sustainable destination management, resident perceptions of tourism, ecotourism and tourism in China. He currently holds a Chang Jiang Scholarship from China and is an elected Fellow of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism.