ABSTRACT
As governments, businesses and communities around the world begin to seriously address a wide range of sustainability issues, tourism has come under increasing criticism. This criticism of tourism highlights its contributions to negative environmental impacts such as climate change (Verbeek and Mommaas, 2008), its continued exploitation of global North–South economic and political inequalities (Klein-Vielhauer, 2009) and its foundation in what is increasingly seen as unnecessary consumption (Lansing and de Vries, 2007). This growing pressure on tourism to justify its existence and to better manage its impacts, both positive and negative, creates a challenge for tourism researchers to better understand the nature of tourism development and its impacts on destinations (Mason, 2008).
