News

International Journal of Sustainable Development
Special Edition on Ecotourism
Expected date of publication: Autumn 2002

Guest Editor: Brian Garrod, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK

Ecotourism is widely considered to be one of the world tourism industry’s major growth areas. Current estimates suggest that the demand for ecotourism is growing by anywhere between 10 and 30 percent per annum. This would imply that the growth in demand for ecotourism is easily outpacing the growth in demand for tourism more generally, which was itself one of the boom industries of the 1990s. Yet for a number of reasons this important growth area of the global tourism industry remains enigmatic. Firstly, ecotourism is an activity that continues to defy simple definition, often being seen as synonymous with ‘nature-based tourism’, ‘wildlife tourism’ or even ‘sustainable tourism’. Academics and policy makers simply do not agree what ecotourism actually is. The term has also been misused by the tourism industry itself merely as a convenient marketing ‘buzzword’. The result is that much of what is described as ecotourism fails to live up to ideals and intentions of the concept. Secondly, ecotourism is an activity that knows neither geographical nor social limits, being practised in many countries throughout the globe and experienced by people from all walks of life, from high-spending safari tourists to social tourism projects for the disadvantaged. Many tourists also engage in an ‘ecotourism experience’ in the course of their conventional holiday. Indeed, it can be argued that ecotourism takes so many different forms that it is actually impossible to categorise and analyse it effectively. Thirdly, relatively little academic attention has been focused explicitly on the subject of ecotourism. Relatively little is known about the motivations and demand behaviour of ecotourists, nor of the various impacts of ecotourism on the economic, socio-cultural and ecological environments in which it takes place, nor of how and for whom ecotourism should best be developed and managed. There are also many concerns about the political role of tourism, including its relationship to issues such as dependency and human rights. The aim of this special edition is to begin to explore the concept of ecotourism by placing it in the context of sustainable development and opening out some of the major issues that underlie the concept, nature, planning, management and practice of ecotourism.

TOP