ABSTRACT
Underpinning the expansion of tourism in the developing world has been a concerted effort on the part of development agencies, the Washington-based International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and, especially, the UN World Tourism Organisation to promote its benefits almost as a developmental panacea (Ferguson 2007). Intellectually, this has been buttressed by the notion of ‘sustainable tourism development’ which has guided policymaking, and sought to reconcile the effects of what is a notoriously unsustainable industry with the imperatives of engendering development in a genuinely sustainable fashion. However, the very idea of sustainable tourism development has tended to be poorly conceptualised, subject to myriad competing interpretations, and has come under sustained and ‘vociferous criticism’ (Sharpley 2009: 57-58).
