SUSTAINABILITY METRICS: MEASURING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FOR TOURISM

Abstract

Sustainable tourism is defined as tourism that improves the quality of life of the host community, providesa high quality of experience for the visitors and maintains the quality of the environment on which both the host community and the visitor depend. In order to measure sustainability in tourism researchers use set of subjective and objective indicators. However, the analysis conducted in this paper shows both types of indicators have some weaknesses, so there is a need to use other measurement tools. As far as we know, there have been no studies of the three most commonly used sustainability measurement tools (AIChEBRIDGESworks Metrics, GEMI Metrics NavigatorTM and IChemE Sustainability Metrics) in tourism. Our study is the first one to deal with these measurement tools. The aim of this paper is to describe most commonly used sustainability measurement tools; their special requirements for tourism and to answer the question how tourism contributes to sustainable development. Analysis shows that tourism contributes to sustainable development primarily through community-driven tourism development; minimization of negative social and cultural impacts; optimization of economic benefits; protection of physical and man-made resources, ethics, policy, standards; visitor satisfaction, maintaining destination attractiveness, use of proper tools and full community participation. Methodology that is used is comparative analysis of three most common sustainability measurement tools. Results obtained by comparative analysis indicate thatAIChEBRIDGESworks Metrics, GEMI Metrics NavigatorTM and IChemE Sustainability Metrics have some common requirements for different businesses. However, requirements for tourism are very strict since it is considered as non-community based business, short-term planning, no protection of natural and human resources, huge economic benefits provider and business that has non-ethnical attitude towards environment. Conclusion states that taking into consideration the weaknesses of all analyzed tools, there is a need for further development of sustainability measurement tools in tourism.