Healthy parks, healthy people, healthy tourism : the application of the ASEAN Healthy Tourism Standard to address the emerging threats from tourism at Ha Long Bay World Heritage Site, Vietnam

This paper explores problems associated with the impacts of tourism on the health of people and the environment. ASEAN through UWS is developing the concept of ‘Healthy Tourism’ to protect and promote the health of tourists and local communities to turn the health and tourism relationship into a more positive one. ‘Healthy Tourism’ is a responsible approach to tourism planning. It seeks to identify mechanisms for the public and private sectors of tourism and health to work together to improve the safety, health and wellbeing of travellers, local people and the natural environment in tourism destinations. Ha Long Bay World Heritage site, Vietnam will be discussed as an example of a protected area in which the pressure from tourism is putting the health of the ecosystem and humans at risk