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O-Level Sustainable Tourism Development (Topic 2.3)
stakeholders and approaches for lasting, equitable tourism
What the syllabus expects
- Economically, tourism development should keep providing jobs and income growth and should generate more social services that lift local standards of living.
Scope: How tourism development contributes to sustainable development - Socially and environmentally, it should honour the authenticity of local communities, practices and art forms and foster intercultural understanding, while sustaining essential ecological processes, conserving natural heritage and protecting biodiversity.
Scope: How tourism development contributes to sustainable development - Sustainable tourism development is reached when sustainability principles apply to the economic, social and environmental sides of tourism and all three dimensions are balanced for the long term.
Scope: How tourism development contributes to sustainable development - Governments manage tourism by setting policies, drawing up plans and enforcing regulations, while international organisations provide consultancy and financial help and raise public awareness.
Scope: How effectively stakeholders influence sustainable tourism development - Businesses and local communities can seek advice from others and join in decision-making, and tourists can build genuine interest in destinations and behave responsibly.
Scope: How effectively stakeholders influence sustainable tourism development - Stakeholders face challenges because their priorities and needs can clash, they hold uneven control over resources, and they may measure sustainability differently from one another.
Scope: How effectively stakeholders influence sustainable tourism development - Ecotourism spans a range from hard to soft forms, but its limitations include doubt over whether efforts to conserve nature and involve local communities will continue.
Scope: How effective different approaches are at achieving sustainable tourism development - Community-based tourism is small-scale and locally run, such as homestays and agricultural tourism, yet risks losing local culture and facing competition from larger operators.
Scope: How effective different approaches are at achieving sustainable tourism development - Pro-poor tourism aims to improve poor communities' livelihoods through training and micro-finance access, but may cut poverty far less than direct investment in social services would.
Scope: How effective different approaches are at achieving sustainable tourism development - Sustainable tourism production occurs when demands on ecosystem services stay within the supply of resources and stakeholders take a long-term, responsible and coordinated view rather than chasing short-term profit.
Scope: How tourism might keep developing sustainably - Sustainable tourism consumption occurs when destinations manage demand, tourists consume responsibly, and policies put local communities first while still weighing tourists' needs.
Scope: How tourism might keep developing sustainably - Equitable distribution of tourism's benefits relies on effective management so everyone shares in them and on minimising negative trade-offs within and between the economic, social and environmental dimensions.
Scope: How tourism might keep developing sustainably
How it's examined
Questions on this topic most often ask you to describe. About 4% of the past-paper style questions in Rae's bank for this subject sit in this topic.
Worked examples
Example 1 (4 marks)
Describe what is meant by pro-poor tourism and discuss its drawbacks.
Show the worked answer
Pro-poor tourism (PPT) is not a specific product but an approach to tourism designed to generate net benefits for the poor in destination areas. It aims to unlock opportunities for poor people through employment, small-enterprise supply of goods and services to tourists, and participation in tourism decision-making, so that a larger share of tourism's gains reaches disadvantaged local communities. Drawbacks: (1) the benefits reaching the poor are often small relative to total tourism revenue, and much income 'leaks' out to external operators, tour companies and imported goods; (2) the poorest frequently lack the capital, skills or land to participate, so gains accrue to the less-poor and inequality can persist; (3) outcomes are hard to measure and guarantee, and tourism can create dependency, seasonal insecurity, or push up local prices and the cost of living. Thus while PPT is well-intentioned, its real impact on poverty can be limited and uneven.
More O-Level Geography topics
Thinking Geographically (Topic 1.1) · Sustainable Development (Topic 1.2) · Geographical Methods (Topic 1.3) · Tourism Activity (Topic 2.1) · Tourism Development (Topic 2.2) · Weather and Climate (Topic 3.1) · all of O-Level Geography