Tourism Ethics Needs More Than a Surface Approach

Abstract

I applaud Derek Hall and Frances Brown for taking the time to address an area of study that, at least in my view, is essential to the future advancement of tourism on many levels. The following few remarks are offered for the purpose of helping to stretch our thinking on many of the ethical themes that have emerged here and in the literature over the past 15 years. Although tourism ethics is still very much at an incipient stage, there are important contributions being made that will resonate with both the applied side of the ‘industry’ as well as the theoretical realm, and where a critical nexus can have far-reaching implications. Ethics, and the related concept of responsibility, have gained momentum in response to the failure of more traditional approaches (i.e., impacts) to fix the many problems that plague tourism. As such, the incorporation of ethics into tourism research comes packaged with a broad array of theoretical tools that provide opportunities to look at tourism problems from a number of different perspectives.