Transition management: a tool for implementing sustainable tourism scenarios?

Abstract

There is academic, political and industry consensus that tourism should achieve greater sustainability, a process requiring stakeholder involvement on various levels. It is less clear how significant actor numbers can be mobilized to pro-actively work towards sustainability goals, achieving significant systemic change. This paper explores the transition management literature to provide a theoretical framework for stakeholder involvement and policy implementation processes in sustainable tourism. A selection of sustainable tourism initiatives by global tourism and transport organizations are reviewed and discussed with regard to the mechanisms and approaches used to involve stakeholders, and their success or otherwise in achieving change. This is compared to the results of a national tourism sustainability initiative by the Norwegian government initiated in 2010. The initiative brought together 62 leading stakeholders from all tourism interests, except airlines, for a series of six intensive discussion and goal setting sessions. Evaluation shows that stakeholder awareness and knowledge appear to have improved substantially, and potential government policy initiatives legitimized – though few tangible results can yet be seen. Overall results suggest that transition management provides a valuable theoretical framework to understand change processes, while the dialetics of stakeholder involvement and policy implementation are an essential precondition for successful governance.

Keywords:

• stakeholder involvement
• transition management
• policy implementation

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stefan Gössling

Stefan Gössling is the research co-ordinator at the Western Norway Research Institute's Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism. Stefan is also a professor at the Department of Service Management, Lund University, Sweden. He has worked on many aspects of sustainable tourism.

C. Michael Hall

C. Michael Hall is a Professor in the Department of Management at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and holds other posts at the University of Oulu, Finland, and at the Linnaeus University at Kalmar in Sweden.

Frida Ekström

Frida Ekström, Agnes Brudvik Engeset and Carlo Aall are all staff members at the Western Norway Research Institute's Centre for Sustainable Tourism. Agnes and Frida were observers at all the meetings held to develop Sustainable Tourism 2015.