A burning global issue, the achievement of sustainable tourism, can never ignore the global south or developing regions of the planet where tourism is rapidly growing. The readership of this book will be taken through a fascinating and comprehensive collection of writings on sustainable tourism, which brings together a compilation of profound conceptual and empirical research findings from diverse socio-economic and environmental settings in the developing South. The contributions of expert and new researchers review and interpret ideals and multiple realities concerning the concept of sustainability in the tourism development process. The categorization of the book into three parts – community, environment and management experience – encompasses the different flavours of sustainability in tourism, catering to the tastes of readers with different perspectives. Detailed accounts of the community component of sustainable tourism bring forth fascinating insights relating to its many facets, such as community capacity and participation, community empowerment, community integration, and community perceptions of tourism. The comprehensive nature of the book, and its diversity, provides a holistic picture of sustainable tourism in the global South today.

This significant volume is the first to focus on both the changing nature of tourism and the capacity of tourism to effect change, especially in the Global South. Geographically, this changing nature of tourism is based on the transforming relationships between demand, supply and location. While this is nothing new in tourism, recent decades have intensified the changing characteristics of global tourism. From another perspective, tourism represents a change, and nowadays many localities and regions aim to use tourism as a tool for positive change, i.e. development. However, this has turned out to be a challenging task in practice, especially in the Global South context where the relationship between tourism growth and local development has often been controversial. This book looks at a host of critical concepts in one volume, such as growth and development, adaptation and resilience, sustainability and responsibility, governance and planning and heritage and destination management strategies. By understanding the drivers of change, this book sheds new insight into the promise and role of sustainability and responsibility in tourism development. This book will be of great interest to all upper-level students, academics and researchers in the fields of Tourism, Geography and Cultural and Heritage studies.

This book examines the nexus between conservation, land conflicts, and sustainable tourism approaches in Southern Africa, with a focus on equity, access, restitution, and redistribution. While Southern Africa is home to important biodiversity, pristine woodlands, and grasslands, and is a habitat for important wildlife species, it is also a land of contestations over its natural resources with a complex historical legacy and a wide variety of competing and conflicting issues surrounding race, cultural and traditional practices, and neoliberalism. Drawing on insights from conservation, environmental, and tourism experts, this volume presents the nexus between land conflicts and conservation in the region. The chapters reveal the hegemony of humans on land and associated resources including wildlife and minerals. By using social science approaches, the book unites environmental, scientific, social, and political issues, as it is imperative we understand the holistic nature of land conflicts in nature-based tourism. Discussing the management theories and approaches to community-based tourism in communities where there are or were land conflicts is critical to understanding the current state and future of tourism in African rural spaces. This volume determines the extent to which land reform impacts community-based tourism in Africa to develop resilient destination strategies and shares solutions to existing land conflicts to promote conservation and nature-based tourism. The book will be of great interest to students, academics, development experts, and policymakers in the field of conservation, tourism geography, sociology, development studies, land use, and environmental management and African studies.

This book investigates urban tourism development in Sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the challenges and risks involved, but also showcasing the potential benefits. Whilst much is written on Africa’s rural environments, little has been written about the tourism potential of the vast natural, cultural and historical resources in the continent’s urban areas. Yet these opportunities also come with considerable environmental, social and political challenges. This book interrogates the interactions between urban risks, tourism and sustainable development in Sub-Saharan African urban spaces. It addresses the underlying issues of governance, power, ownership, collaboration, justice, community empowerment and policies that influence tourism decision-making at local, national and regional levels. Interrogating the intricate relationships between tourism stakeholders, this book ultimately reflects on how urban risk can be mitigated, and how sustainable urban tourism can be harnessed for development. The important insights in this book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners across Tourism, Geography, Urban Development, and African Studies.

This work explores the increasingly popular phenomenon of volunteer tourism in the Global South, paying particular attention to the governmental rationalities and socio-economic conditions that valorise it as a noble and necessary cultural practice. Combining theoretical research with primary data gathered during volunteering programs in Guatemala and Ghana, the author argues that although volunteer tourism may not trigger social change, provide meaningful encounters with difference, or offer professional expertise, as the brochure discourse and the scholarly literature on tourism and hospitality often promises, the formula remains a useful strategy for producing the subjects and social relations neoliberalism requires. Vrasti suggests that the value of volunteer tourism should not to be assessed in terms of the goods and services it delivers to the global poor, but in terms of how well the practice disseminates entrepreneurial styles of feeling and action. Analysing the key effects of volunteer tourism, it is demonstrated that far from being a selfless and history-less rescue act, volunteer tourism is in fact a strategy of power that extends economic rationality, particularly its emphasis on entrepreneurship and competition, to the realm of political subjectivity. Volunteer Tourism in the Global South provides a unique and innovative analysis of the relationship between the political and personal dimensions of volunteer tourism and will be of great interest to scholars and students of international relations, cultural geography, tourism, and development studies.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

'Responsible Tourism presents a wide variety of valuable lessons learned in responsible tourism initiatives in Southern Africa that many tourism practitioners can use in their efforts to make the tourism sector work for the poor and for the environment.' Dr Harsh Varma Director Development Assistance Department World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) 'For those interested in how tourism can assist in the economic and social development of societies in need Responsible Tourism effectively integrates scales and types of knowledge to present an informative stimulating perspective. It will be on my boo.