ABSTRACT
Sustainable tourism is at the forefront of contemporary policy agendas and in spite of fuzziness in its interpretation (Coccossis, 1996) there are a few key principles, which are widely accepted. One of these is that tourism growth should be based on carrying capacity in the sense that tourism should be developed in respect to natural resources and ecosystems, community values and lifestyles while ensuring opportunities for social and economic development (EC, 2003). In spite of the wide appeal of the concept at a political level (WTO, 1998; WSSD, 2002) its application has been rather limited in practice (EC, 2002). At this stage it would be interesting to examine some of the policy issues involved in operationalizing tourism carrying capacity assessment into practice, that is, the opportunities and difficulties involved, the types of decisions which have to be made, as well as the risks that could be encountered once a decision is made to proceed with the idea of limiting tourism growth on the basis of carrying capacity.
