Abstract
The paper’s first part analyzes global tourism’s core concerns and responsibilities in the new millennium, one of which is sustainability. Sustainability is shown to be made operational by the triple bottom line, which is analyzed as an internal managerial decision-making and planning tool as well as an external assessment and reporting framework. Key triple bottom line dimensions are presented together with economic, social, and environmental performance and impact measurements via a range of key indicators. The paper’s second part evaluates the concept, forms, and contributions of slow travel and tourism to worldwide sustainability discussions, especially to forms of fast tourism. Slow tourism’s meanings comprise sustainability and environmentalism. As an opposite to slow tourism modes, airline travel has conflicting solutions within the airline and tourism industries, their customer preferences, and the global business environment. Similarly, business travelers’ motivations, decision-making, and beneficiaries have moved environmental and sustainability considerations up on their agendas. Multinational companies’ corporate social responsibility endows them with a special role in branding and marketing their sustainability aspirations. Student and youth traveler numbers increase steadily, corresponding to their market relevance and diversity of motives. Finally, religious tourists occupy a central position in global travel considerations, which impacts pilgrimage locations and ecologies. The paper’s third part shows how fast travel forms and industries can be inspired by slow tourism, especially when combining triple bottom line indicators, corporate social responsibility considerations, and slow travel and tourism philosophies and practices. This combined approach shows potential especially for global tourism’s marketing and branding strategies.
Highlights
The paper’s first part analyzes global tourism’s core concerns and responsibilities in the new millennium, one of which is sustainability
Each of these bottom lines or balance sheets is physically represented by key indicators on so-called report cards, containing a theoretically unlimited, but practically for each company and industry sector selected list of factors to be taken into consideration for its business dealings and activities (Murphy, 2012; Darcy, Cameron, & Pegg, 2011)
The Development of Slow Travel Beginning in the last two decades of the 20th century, the so-called “slow movements” in several areas of life, entered the tourism industry as well, in the form and with the labels of “slow travel” or “slow tourism” (Dickinson & Lumsdon, 2010). The realization of such slow travel or tourism stood in contrast to the traditionally fast-paced forms of motion and travel, above all airplane travel
Summary
According to the World Tourism Organization’s “Tourism 2020 Vision”, 11 key factors decisively influence global tourism including economical, demographical, and socioenvironmental factors. A World Tourism Organization’s 2005 guide for policy makers conceptualized sustainability as a long-term balance between environmental, economic, and socio-cultural tourism development, focusing on using resources least incisively, respecting social and cultural traditions of host communities, and providing fair and future-oriented business dealings (United Nations Environment Program & World Tourism Organization, 2005). While critical voices considered “sustainability” as an overall too unclear concept, besides being Westerncentric and favoring developed countries (Meyer, 2007), it has become both widely accepted and common practice in international politics, business practice, and tourism literature. The latter has developed and detailed it into the operational framework of the “triple bottom line”
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