Putting social impact assessment to the test as a method for implementing responsible tourism practice

Abstract

The discourse on the social impacts of tourism needs to shift from the current descriptive critique of tourism to considering what can be done in actual practice to embed the management of tourism's social impacts into the existing planning, product development and operational processes of tourism businesses. A pragmatic approach for designing research methodologies, social management systems and initial actions, which is shaped by the real world operational constraints and existing systems used in the tourism industry, is needed. Our pilot study with a small Bulgarian travel company put social impact assessment (SIA) to the test to see if it could provide this desired approach and assist in implementing responsible tourism development practice, especially in small tourism businesses. Our findings showed that our adapted SIA method has value as a practical method for embedding a responsible tourism approach. While there were some challenges, SIA proved to be effective in assisting the staff of our test case tourism business to better understand their social impacts on their local communities and to identify actions to take.