Just Because It Seems Impossible, Doesn’t Mean We Shouldn’t At Least Try: The Need for Longitudinal Perspectives on Tourism Partnerships and the SDGs

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17 highlights the importance that the partnership narrative plays in the implementation of SDGs. However, given the brevity of many development projects, these partnerships are often developed and concluded rapidly, with little attention given to longer-term implications or success. This paper argues that in order to create and develop partnerships that properly address the SDGs, it is imperative that a process perspective is developed that takes into account the range of stakeholders and interests, values, and the power relations between actors prior to and during the project together with a comprehensive understanding of what is success. This requires a full awareness of the project’s context and previous interventions, activities, and policies. In order to illustrate the necessity of longitudinal partnerships and perspectives, a case study, a community-based development project in New Delhi, India, is used. The goal of the project has been to ensure that the community is actively involved in the entire process, eventually becoming owners of the interventions so that, when the project and partnership eventually ends, the community continues to benefit. Examples from the project are used to emphasize the importance of long-term planning and partnership driven by context-specificity, implementation processes and policy-awareness.

Keywords:

• Sustainable development goals
• India
• public–private partnership
• community development
• policy process
• values
• partnership flow model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bailey Ashton Adie

Bailey Ashton Adie is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Business, Law and Digital Technologies at Solent University, Southampton, United Kingdom. Her research interests include World Heritage tourism and management, sustainable heritage tourism for community development, second home tourism, tourism and disasters, tourism branding and marketing, film tourism, overtourism, and visitor management.

Alberto Amore

Dr Alberto Amore is a Lecturer in Tourism and Travel Management at Solent University, Southampton, United Kingdom. His current research interests are destination resilience, post-disaster governance in tourism, overtourism, and the sharing economy. He is also interested in public policy, urban studies, and tourism and urban regeneration.

C. Michael Hall

C. Michael Hall is a Professor at University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Visiting Professor, Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden; Guest Professor, Lund University, Helsingborg, Sweden; and Docent, University of Oulu, Finland. Co-editor of Current Issues in Tourism, his research interests include tourism, regional development, global environmental change, food, and sustainability.