For attainment sustainable tourism requires the growth of tourism‟s contribution to the economy and society as well as the sustainable use of resources and the environment. The achievement of both relies on dependable and sound understanding, appropriate development and management of the tourism demand. As demand patterns and economic structures change, no industry, and in particular no industry at the national or regional level, could or should assume that there is a constant or increasing flow of demand for its outputs and thus focus solely on resource issues (Butler, 1996). According to Elliot (1997:19) local government plays an important role in tourism, as it is only governments that have the authority to provide political stability, security and the legal and financial framework which tourism requires. Connell et al (2009) argue that one of the more important roles of local government is the development and implementation of community planning, legislation and policy. However, while tourism-related developments are usually integrated with economic development or official community plans, often there is no guiding policy framework or identified area of responsibility for tourism, which can be problematic for effective and sustainable tourism development. The effectiveness of local tourism governance in achieving the goals of sustainable tourism depends on the effectiveness of institutional structures and processes, and the rational resources and skill sets available (Healy, 2006). This study examines the arrangements of selected municipalities and the effectiveness of their local tourism governance and its relevance to sustainable tourism.

The South African National Department of Tourism has recently initiated the National Tourism Sector Strategy aimed at developing a sustainable tourism economy, and making the country a Top 20 global tourism destination by 2020.China is one of South Africa’s major non-African sources of tourist arrivals. To ensure a growing share of this booming market, South African tourism scholars and practitioners have to pay close attention to the behaviour of Chinese outbound tourists, particularly their destination choice behaviour. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)– an extension of the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)– can serve as a basis for researching destination choice. According to the TPB literature, intention is the most immediate and important determinant of behaviour. Three direct predictors of intention, namely, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control, are functions of latent behavioural, normative, and control beliefs, respectively. The TPB is parsimonious but open to the inclusion of additional predictors if there is evidence that these predictors may explain a significant proportion of the variance in intention and behaviour after the basic predictors (attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control) have been accounted for. The current research successfully extended the TPB model for predicting potential Chinese tourists’ intentions to visit South Africa by adding two additional variables: travel motivation and travel constraints. The push-pull motivation framework discussed in the study postulates that people travel because they are pushed by internal forces (inner needs) and pulled by external forces (destination attributes). Typical barriers to travel include intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural constraints. The new model makes an important contribution to the literature on destination choice, and provides South Africa’s destination marketers with suggestions for attracting and serving Chinese tourists. In addition, the research shows that both travel motivation and travel constraints can be used as bases for segmenting the outbound Chinese tourist market interested in visiting South Africa. A survey approach and a structured questionnaire distributed electronically to the online panel members of a Chinese market research company were instrumental in collecting the empirical data for the study. The questionnaire was originally written in English and translated into Chinese (Mandarin) via a blind translation-back-translation method. Attitude, subjective norms, perceived control, and visit intention were all operationalised as unidimensional and used scales adapted from previous studies. New scales were developed for travel motivation and travel constraints– both operationalised as multidimensional. Quota sampling, used to identify respondents aged 18 or older and living in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, resulted in 630 usable questionnaires obtained from 1,510 sent invitation e-mails, yielding a response rate of 41.7%. The raw data collected were prepared through the sequential steps of editing, coding, and filing, and then analysed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. Descriptive analysis suggested that broadening personal horizons, viewing the natural scenery, and seeing something different were the top motives for visiting South Africa, while language, fear of crime, and lack of travel companions were the top barriers to visiting South Africa. According to the factor analysis, travel motivation had three underlying dimensions – learning, escape, and aesthetics and appreciation, while operational, risk and fear, and social barriers were three underlying dimensions of travel constraints. Regression analysis showed that the proposed extended TPB model had higher predictive power for visit intention than both TRA and TPB models; the basic predictors – attitude, subjective norms, and perceived control – all had a significant impact on visit intention; and in terms of the additional predictors, learning, operational constraints, and social constraints had a significant impact on visit intention. The analysis of variance indicated that travel frequency and age were the most profound background factors with an influence on the extended TPB model. Finally, cluster analysis resulted in two market segments with distinct profiles, that is, High-Motivation/ Low-Constraint (HMLC) tourists and Low-Motivation/High-Constraint (LMHC) tourists. Based on the theoretical and empirical findings of the current research, it is recommended that destination marketers in South Africa: advertise specific benefits of touring South Africa, namely, increasing knowledge, relieving stress, and enjoying high environmental quality, to advance Chinese residents’ perceptions of the country; develop tourism experiences that can be taken in a week or shorter to cater for the unique annual leave and public holiday policy in China; launch a media relations campaign in China to ensure that the facts about South Africa are communicated without distortion; collaborate with other destination stakeholders such as government and businesses, to actively attract and retain Chinese tourists for example by educating the public about Chinese culture and training employees to improve the quality of service; target the HMLC tourists via the Internet (particularly the social media) and by developing holiday packages that include activities related to cultural tourism, rest and relaxation, and nature-based tourism; and target the LMHC tourists by cooperating with local travel agencies and by developing holiday packages that highlight the diversity of tourism activities and offer value-added products/services.

The goal of the thesis is to describe the approach of Peru to the sustainable tourism. The thesis analyses therefore the situation of the sustainable tourism in Peru. In the first part, the tourism is characterized with its future trends, positive and negative impacts on the society and the environment. Hereafter, the conception of sustainability is introduced followed by the short characterization of Peru as a tourist destination and its approach to the sustainable tourism.

Cultural tourism is considered to be one of the largest and fastest growing types of global tourism markets. Culture is increasingly being used to promote destinations and enhance their attractiveness and competitiveness. Many cities are now actively developing their cultural assets as a way of developing comparative advantages over others in the tourism marketplace. In the light of this, there is need to diversify the tourism economy of the City of Johannesburg by strengthening the Cultural tourism aspect. Despite the fact that Greater Johannesburg Metropolitan Area has a good cultural infrastructure which includes a number of theatres, museums and art galleries, cultural tourism is one of the underdeveloped aspects of the local tourism economy. The main focus of the research was to identify ways to diversify the tourism economy of the City of Johannesburg by anchoring it on cultural products and activities, thereby improving the cultural image and competitiveness of Johannesburg as an urban cultural city destination in Africa. / Dissertation (MHCS)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Historical and Heritage Studies / MHCS / Unrestricted

This thesis investigates how hotels communicate their sustainability efforts to their customers on their websites. As sustainability is becoming more known and more expected, businesses feel more pressure to have sustainable initiatives. However, sustainability has no international standards, meaning that businesses can have quite different ideas of what sustainability entails. Therefore, this study looks into different sustainable initiatives that hotels have. The thesis uses discourse analysis to compare what sustainability issues are addressed and how they are presented on the websites. This is done by comparing six theoretical perspectives: sustainability, marketing, storytelling, implementation, and certification. The study was conducted by investigating the websites of 75 hotels in four different cities across the world: Helsinki, Berlin, Los Angeles, and Wellington. In addition, eight international hotel chains were investigated. The hotels are first compared within countries and, afterwards, the countries are compared with each other. The study finds that the most common sustainable initiatives in hotels are environmental changes within the hotels. Furthermore, it is found that there is a lot of variation between how hotels present their sustainability initiatives. While some hotels present their initiatives clearly, some others only vaguely mention them or hide them away. While many hotels have certification, they do not show the certificates clearly. Furthermore, none of the international chains have certification. The thesis concludes in suggesting a possible future study that would examine how the sustainable initiatives on the websites differ from reality.

The concept of geopark was first proposed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1999. After that, geotourism emerged as a novel strategy for sustainable development in rural areas. Tourism carrying capacity is a concept related to the optimum use of natural areas without creating environmental degradation. This concept has been widely employed in nature tourism in national parks. To apply the carrying capacity concept in global geoparks, the purpose of this study is to remodel existing tourism carrying capacity frameworks to foster sustainable use of global geoparks. A review of the development of carrying capacity concept and six tourism carrying capacity frameworks, namely, Recreation Opportunity Spectrum (ROS), Limits of Acceptable Change (LAC), Visitor Impact Management (VIM), Visitor Experience and Resource Protection (VERP), Visitor Activity Management Process (VAMP), and Tourism Optimization Management Model (TOMM) in Chapter 2 demonstrates that tourism carrying capacity concept is able to raise the awareness on sustainable tourism in national parks but these traditional tourism carrying capacity frameworks commonly failed to address the interests of all stakeholders. Thus, this thesis adopts the definition of tourism carrying capacity for geoparks as the situation or condition of a geopark where there is reconciliation (i.e., having balance and harmony) of environmental conservation, social maintenance, and economic development. Based on the three aspects (i.e., environmental conservation, social maintenance, and economic development) of this concept, a tailor-made framework for global geoparks was built in Chapter 3, using confirmatory factor analysis and the revised importance-performance analysis to evaluate tourism carrying capacity in Global Geoparks. Then the modified tourism carrying capacity framework was applied in two UNESCO Global Geoparks, namely, Hong Kong Global Geopark and Danxiashan Global Geopark, to address the inherent tensions between resources conservation and sustainable development in both Geoparks in Chapters 4 and 5. It was found that 1) there was compatibility only among the three dimensions, namely, environmental conservation, social maintenance, and economic development in two Geoparks; 2) the structure of the framework and the compatibility of the three dimensions can only be confirmed in the local community model (Figure 3.3) by the importance data of factors, i.e., resource, human environment, and facility. No validity can be established in the construct of the GGN model on the local community's satisfaction of the overall environments in two Parks and neither is there an agreement between the visitors in both Parks with the GGN criteria; and 3) from the satisfaction data on the three factors of the visitor model (Figure 3.4), i.e., environmental carrying capacity, political-economic carrying capacity, and socio-demographic carrying capacity, it shows that HKGP appears to be more sustainably managed than DXSGP. Collectively, this study has provided a new framework for evaluating tourism carrying capacity in a geopark. I hope to advance the methodological innovation of sustainable geotourism management and supplement the lacuna of criteria and standards for Global Geoparks in future studies.

One important aspect of sustainable tourism is that local communities are involved in the management of tourism, as this can potentially help avoid negative social, environmental and economic impacts on the destination and local residents. Workaway and WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) are work- and cultural exchange programs in which hosts receive help with their work in exchange for free food and accommodation for guests. Since the hosts are in charge of deciding if, when, and how to host guests, Workaway and WWOOF could be seen as a type of community-based tourism where locals initiate and manage tourism themselves. This study applied a qualitative case study approach using semi-structured interviews and participant observation to investigate Workaway and WWOOF hosts’ motivations for becoming hosts, as well as their experiences as hosts, on the island of Gotland, Sweden, which has not been explored so far in other research. It further aimed to discover how Workaway and WWOOF may or may not contribute to sustainable tourism besides empowering the host. The research results indicated that Gotland’s WWOOF and Workaway hosts were motivated to become hosts from a combination of needing help with work and wanting to meet new people. Their experiences as hosts have many benefits, such as receiving help with work, making lasting friendships, and traveling through their guests, but also some challenges, such as the effort of hosting guests, having difficult guests and a clash of expectations between guest and host. Similarly, while WWOOF and Workaway seem to contribute to sustainable tourism by making hosting and traveling accessible to many people or spreading awareness about sustainability, among other aspects, these programs could also deter from sustainable tourism by being available mostly to privileged guests and hosts or potentially displacing local workers, among other aspects. Though far from perfect, Workaway and WWOOF nevertheless enable local hosts to benefit from tourism, which is not always the case.

During the past several decades, globalization forces in general and mechanization of coal mining jobs more specifically have sharply changed the economic and social conditions of many of the coal towns in the Central Appalachian region of the United States. Efforts to identify and seek alternatives to replace the ongoing decline of their traditional way of life are deeply entangled with community identity and culture due to the historical hegemonic role and power of coal mining and other extractive industries and their critical role in forming residents' identities. Many of the small communities in this region are pursuing initiatives to highlight their natural and cultural assets in efforts to develop tourism as a new foundation for their economies. However, to avoid tourism simply becoming another extractive industry, researchers and practitioners have suggested that these communities must develop capacity to participate in and take ownership of tourism-related decision-making processes. In an effort to examine the dynamics of one such effort in detail this study drew on Community Capacity theory as interpreted by Chaskin (2001a) to explore the relationships between Community Cultural Development (CCD) and the sustainability of tourism in a small town located in Central Appalachia seeking to transition to a visitor-based economy. This dissertation explored whether and in what ways engaging in CCD projects and community capacity are related and identified ways such interactions influence the sustainability of tourism. Along with personal observation and a review of relevant archival data, I conducted 10 semi-structured interviews with a sample of individuals from a community cultural development organization regarding their efforts to build possibilities for sustainable tourism in their rural jurisdiction. This study's findings contribute to the existing literature by suggesting Chaskin's framework of community capacity as an apt model for charting progress towards sustainable community-based tourism. Moreover, this research found that employing CCD methods can enhance community capacity by encouraging a sense of shared identity among the group's members and through them among a broader cross-section of residents. Lastly, this inquiry suggested that CCD contributed to the sustainability of tourism in the case study community by increasing residents' effective participation in decision-making processes concerning such efforts, encouraging locals' partnership and ownership of tourism development projects and providing space for negotiating the tourist gaze in guest-host relationships. / Doctor of Philosophy / Since at least the late 1960s and the advent of the ongoing decline of mining, the populations of many small coal-dependent towns in Central Appalachia have fallen into economic hardship (e.g., high rates of poverty, too few and/or inadequate jobs and public services), now confront a range of social issues arising from that harsh reality (e.g., youth out-migration, rapidly aging populations, the current opioid epidemic). In response to those conditions, many affected communities are investing in their wealth of natural resources and unique cultural assets to promote tourism as a palliative, if not replacement, for their previous economies. Tourism has the potential to reduce poverty and to boost shared prosperity among host communities, but it also, if poorly managed, could become another extractive industry. This study focused on the ways that residents in one Central Appalachian community have individually and as groups sought to assume ownership of their area's tourism-related efforts. I specifically analyzed participation in that jurisdiction's cultural activities (e.g., community theatre and story circles) to understand whether and how involvement in them affected participants' awareness of their capability to address the conditions in their community. My interviews with 10 active participants in my sample community's collective cultural projects revealed that residents did come to perceive themselves as possessing capacity as individuals and as groups to address the challenges that have arisen in their community as its traditional economy has declined. This study also found that participants in culture-based group activities were better prepared to participate effectively in tourism-related decision-making processes in their community. Indeed, many of those I interviewed have become owners and/or partners in tourism development projects because of the information and networks they developed during their participation in cultural activities. Finally, this analysis found that community cultural activities created a space for residents to interact regardless of their socio-economic status, ideological predisposition or other characteristics; an outcome that interviewees indicated they had come to cherish.

Heritage tourism has taken deep roots over the last decade with several destination management areas effectively carving a niche for themselves as places that offer products that help people to relive history. For Ghana, with its various forts and castles spread along its coastline; inhabitants of such communities have taken it for granted that tourists visit.Emerging research has shown that when an area is able to package its heritage artifacts and monuments in an integrated manner with its culture, no matter what it is; then it can be more successful in marketing its tourism products for sustainable development.The culture of a place however, cannot be looked at in isolation. The immediate and remote influences all around it must be explored. Butre as a tourist community, has had its culture over the last couple of years been open to influences not only from tourists but also from the larger globalization platform; brought on by travel, access to satellite TV, mobile phone and Internet access etc. Over the course of the few weeks I spent in Butre, talking to and following the lives of 8 community members; I realized that the rich history of the fort which goes to reinforce our colonial history which is of course, significant to the outside world is left largely untold. My motivation for embarking on this study stemmed from a fascination in knowing why tourists would choose to visit one particular site within the same geographical area. Does the lives and culture of the people there matter at all? The results as this study showed, buttressed the point made in the opening paragraph that yes indeed, we as a people living in these areas do take for granted the artifact, its history and the giant number of tourists that come to see the peculiarities that our area offers. To revert this however, we must begin to think of employing the tried and tested community-participation methodologies that foster sustainable development through the integration of the very important and interrelated strands of culture, heritage and people.

M-Tech Tourism Management / Residents’ attitudes towards and opinions about tourism is important as they are the ones dealing directly or indirectly with tourists and the development of the industry. As one of the key stakeholders their support is needed to grow the industry in a sustainable manner. For South Africa as a developing country tourism is one of the focus areas of development. This growth is supported by a number of initiatives to create more (but also more sustainable) tourism destinations especially for small towns such as Parys (Free State; South Africa). The primary objective was to analyse the social effects of tourism and determine the factors influencing these effects on the local community of Parys, located in the province of the Free State. This was done by conducting an empirical study among residents in Parys. The questionnaire was developed based on similar research done in other communities. The questionnaires were captured in Microsoft Excel and analysed in the IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS v 23.0). From a negative point of view residents highlighted the increase in prices of goods and services due to tourism development. From a positive perspective residents felt that the development of tourism lead to more opportunities for people to have fun, more tourists visit the area and the image of Parys has improved. From the factor analysis for social effects the following factors were evident: Business and community effects, Negative social effects, Opportunities for residents, Environmental effects and Cost of living effects. The latter two factors were rated the highest and thus residents felt that tourism lead to an effect on the environment and an effect on their cost of living. This should be monitored so that residents remain positive and do not start to blame tourists for negativities happening in Parys. When analysing the image of Parys from the perspective of the residents the factor analyses revealed three factors namely Infra- and suprastructure, Nature and cultural attractions and Hospitality of which they felt the strongest about the first and the last factor. Clearly from the results these residents enjoy staying in Parys, do not consider tourists to be a threat and welcomes visitors to the area. The social effects of tourism development is, to a certain extent, influenced by gender, language, level of education, age and number of years living in Parys. Overall it can be concluded that residents are fairly happy with tourists visiting Parys and the development taking place due to tourism. They are aware of the negative impacts but the positive impacts currently outweigh the negative impacts. It is recommended to include residents in the development process or at least keep them aware of what is happening, why it is happening and what opportunities it might bring to them. The results of this study differ from that of others indicating that communities are unique and there are unique aspects influencing their opinions regarding the social effects of tourism. The researcher recommended that the private and public sectors of Parys should continue their current practices to uphold the positive attitudes but also consider options where residents can become more involved in the development of the industry.