ABSTRACT
Tourism is one of the most important economic sectors of our era, particularly for regions with limited industrial or agricultural development options, where comparative traditional development disadvantages, such as small-scale economies or lack of complex infrastructures and so on, may be turned into comparative advantages for quality tourism. Many Mediterranean tourist destinations could be considered as typical examples of such a case. Experience shows that although tourism is, in principle, one of the activities which could be adaptable to sustainability criteria, in the vast majority of cases it ‘consumes’ the natural and cultural capital on which it is based. This happens whenever tourist activities exceed the carrying capacity of the system. To adequately address the sustainability planning of a region or city where tourism constitutes a major activity it is of utmost importance that carrying capacity is properly assessed.
