Towards more sustainable tourism in China: small steps and bigger strategies

Recently, western researchers writing about tourism in China have been especially concerned with building sustainable tourism. This paper reviews the global forces shaping tourism and suggests that sustainability concerns underpin many of the challenges identified in creating positive tourism futures. It is argued that specific actions and understandings of what can be done to implement and research sustainability are of pressing interest. Tourism researchers may enjoy the descriptions of the challenges but feel compelled to offer some solutions; some ways forward for the better management of tourism places and sites and hence a better life for the communities of many regions (cf.Moscardo,2008)[1]. The extensive debates about the sustainability of tourism in developing or transitioning countries now sees increasingly widespread agreement that tourism is not an isolated business but instead is a well connected force shaping change (Bramwell and Lane,2005)[2]. Tourism affects many other businesses and is of concern to many citizens but there must also be the consideration that tourism is affected by many global forces. In particular, the future of tourism anywhere is likely to be shaped by some commonly identified world tourism trends. Such trends can be identified from multiple sources and contemporary analysis [3-20]. This paper has a specific concern with practical and applied action from western tourism scholarship to assist sustainability in tourism and tourism development. As readers contemplate the trends and their features, it is suggested that they mentally observe which of the single or multiple aspects of sustainability are hidden within the discussion of each major force acting on tourism. Key ideas to build sustainable tourism development are introduced from the western academic literature in tourism through the notions of five major pathways, ten specific behaviors for individuals to adopt and four cells for organizations to consider their development strategies. International collaborative research is advocated to test the value of these approaches in the complex context of China and its growing tourism presence