Abstract
This chapter will carry out an analysis of several factors of environmental and social change and its impacts in terms of tourism development and economic performance. A number of alternative mitigation measures will then be analyzed to counteract the negative effects on environmental and social components by the adoption of guidelines associated with more sustainable practices provided by a circular economy approach. Afterwards, the scope of tourism management practices and social media strategies for a sustainable tourism interactivity based on computational technologies will be discussed. Finally, a series of recommendations, further research directions and conclusions derived from the analysis conducted will be presented.
TopIntroduction
Numerous factors of environmental decline have caused along the years an increasing awareness among public authorities and tourists about the need to adopt more sustainable patterns of consumption in order to guarantee the viability of destinations over time. Tourism industry and most local bodies consider nowadays sustainable development principles and practices as an opportunity to preserve their own territorial resources through integrated policy, sustainable planning and responsible management. Nevertheless, it has proven extremely difficult to go from theory to practice despite the time elapsed (Boyra, 2003, 2005, 2009) since environmental concern was internationally brought up in 1972 by Meadows et al.
Carrying capacity approaches to measure tourism impacts have been widely applied in tourism and recreation studies since the 1960s, although some authors trace its emergence to as far back as 1930. Although carrying capacity can be viewed as an important theoretical milestone (Coccossis et al., 2002) it has become less popular in recent years as sustainable tourism and its associated theoretical models have come to dominate discussions of the management of tourism and its impacts.
Some of the most recent models used today to analyze and forecast the development of a destination are: Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC), Visitor Impact Management (VIM), Visitor Experience and Resource Protection (VERP), Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS), Visitor Activity Management Process (VAMP) and Tourism Optimization Management Model (TOMM) (Lindberg et al., 1997; Komsary et al., 2018). The aim of this chapter is to raise a series of questions that allow academic discussion and reflection and at the same time enrich the debate on how to continue to make tourism prosper in the digital era while overcoming the threats that loom over the future of human development.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Artificial Intelligence: An area of computer science that deals with giving machines the ability to seem like they have human intelligence. The power of a machine to copy intelligent human behavior - a robot with artificial intelligence - abbreviation AI.
Maroon Theorem: This theorem shows that as the platform becomes larger, the cost of trying to do business outside the platform gets higher.
Adaptive Capacity: The general ability of institutions, systems, and individuals to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences.
Uncertainty: Scientific concept used in risk assessment to describe all types of limitations in available knowledge at the time an assessment is conducted, with the agreed resources, that affect the probability of possible outcomes to the assessment.
Drivers, Pressures, State, Impact, and Response Model of Intervention: A causal framework used to describe the interactions between society and the environment - abbreviation DPSIR.
Life Cycle Assessment: An analysis of the impact one object has on the world around it. The analysis of the environmental impact one object has on the world - abbreviation LCA.
Tourism Industry: Unlike with other industries, there is not one clear product or service. It incorporates many industries, including accommodation, transport, attractions, travel companies, etc.