Tourism-sustainable development-environment

Abstract: Economists, geographers and meteorologists may find it relatively straightforward to understand and predict with accuracy the outlook for the economy or the weather for the coming week as these events are closely bound to the present and have a greater degree of certainty. What about a more long term perspective? In a world where 25 million tourists took an international holiday in 1950 and 100 years later it is forecasted to grow to 4.7 billion. Can humankind meet that forecast given the issues of ageing populations, peak oil, the global financial crisis and climate change? Who will be the future tourist? Has the world the right policy options and it is prepared for change? "Mainstreaming sustainability " means to rise to the challenge of the mass tourism market. It is a well-known fact that tourism involves commercial exchanges, commitments, development and cultural sustainability, towards the tranquillity and the satisfaction of the people's aspirations. The world crisis means a moment of incertitude, but opens, also, immense possibilities. It is true that we face one of the highest economic deficits from the last half a century, with an economic disorder, with the increase of the unemployment and the decrease of the trust in the market, all these generating a recession whose end is not entirely known. The fact that this crisis overlaps the problems caused by the climate changes determines increased difficulties in the creation of new workplaces, in the imperious attempt to reduce poverty. This crisis places, at the same time, a constant pressure on tourists, but also on the employees from the tourism industry and the tourist market, considerably threatening the policies and the actual practices. But, as Phoenix bird that rises again from its own ashes, tourism has constantly proved a remarkable capacity of recovery and it has done that even more powerful, proving that it is a perfectly viable sector