ABSTRACT
The impact of tourism development on the social, economic and physical environments of a given community has been at the centre of academic tourism research during the last three decades. A wide range of case studies have looked into the various positive and negative impacts, in an attempt to identify and explain the causal relations between development and impact characteristics. In doing so, these studies have tried to demonstrate how positive results should be enhanced, and how negative results could be avoided. Although many such case studies were policy- and planning-oriented, many countries and tourism regions opted for ignoring the lessons of uncontrolled rapid tourism development. In most cases, such an ‘ostrich attitude’ led to a combination of negative economic, social and environmental damages, which reflected on the future of the local, regional and/or national sustainability of a tourism system and its host community. Thus, mistakes have been unintentionally and/or unavoidably repeated while trying to exploit tourism resources. This repeated sequence is termed here ‘acquired tourism deficiency syndrome’ or ATDS. This chapter suggests that Israel, among other Mediterranean Basin countries, has been a victim of such a syndrome.
