| Abstract: |
This paper discusses the nexus between economically-driven tourism development
and broader societal aspects of social, cultural and ecological
sustainability. The paper argues that similar to the discussion on the limits
to growth in industrial development that started in the 1970s, the currently
debated phenomenon of overtourism calls for a parallel discussion in tourism
development. Similar to the argument that industrial development needs to be
driven by qualitative, not quantitative growth, tourism development has to
reorient itself away from the goal of ever-increasing tourist arrivals towards
broader objectives of socially, culturally and ecologically sustainable
qualitative growth. This argument leads to two policy implications. First,
policymakers should consider which forms of tourism to encourage and which
ones to discourage. Second, tourism policy should set incentives and
disincentives accordingly. Institutional approaches from human geography can
serve to analyze the prospects of these incentives and disincentives, and
insights from behavioral economics such as the nudging approach can serve to
shape policies accordingly. The paper takes the cases of two cities on the
Adriatic sea, Venice and Dubrovnik, as examples. |