Introduction
Consumption and production patterns are mutually dependent
In both source markets and destinations, the public sector has a special responsibility to encourage responsible consumer behaviour of tourists and at the same time to provide targeted guidance for tourism service providers, be it traditional tour operators or online travel agents (OTA), to ‘produce’ sustainably. The tourists are also responsible, as well as the businesses, since sustainable consumption patterns are closely interlinked with sustainable production.
In Germany – traditionally a strong source market – a new representative survey has shown that 61 percent of those interviewed said they would like to make their holiday sustainable, but only two percent actually turn their good intentions into practice. The barriers mentioned mainly include concerns about possible extra costs and a lack of suitable products.
Monitoring impacts
Developing tools to monitor tourism with regard to its impacts on sustainable development is certainly an important step. However, this requires more far-reaching criteria and indicators than have usually been used in evaluations for example the contribution of tourism to the Gross National Product, or the number of newly created jobs in a destination. Rather, tourism must be measured against an improved quality of life and better development perspectives of the people who are to benefit from sustainable development through tourism. For this purpose, Goal 12 provides a new frame of action which not only includes developing suitable tools to monitor tourism at the local level, but also tangible measures in the source markets and ‘places of production’ in tourism, i.e. in the destinations.
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