ABSTRACT
The concept of responsible tourism is not new. More than 20 years ago, for example, Haywood (1988) was exploring the idea of ‘responsible and responsive tourism planning’ while Richter (1989: viii), in the preface to a book on the politics of tourism in Asia, made reference to a ‘Centre for Responsible Tourism’. In fact, by the early 1990s, the term ‘responsible tourism’ had become synonymous with environmentally and socially appropriate forms of tourism in general and with alternative (to mass) forms of tourism in particular. In other words, as concern over the negative environmental and socio-cultural consequences of mass tourism became more widespread, responsible tourism became increasingly used by both proponents and critics as a collective descriptor of alternative forms of tourism (Cooper and Ozdil 1992; Harrison and Husbands 1996; Wheeller 1991). In short, responsible tourism was broadly synonymous with what, at that time, came to be referred to somewhat narrowly as sustainable tourism (Sharpley 2009).
