Sustainability in tourism can be defined as an idea of holiday at a place as a tourist and doing everything possible to make an affirmative influence on the economy, environment, and society. The main reason behind improving this place, is respecting the local people’s culture, habitants, social economic system, and customs. This means that anyone visiting should try as much as possible to have low impact on the culture and environment. In addition, visitors should also help the local people by creating job openings for them. The main behind having sustainable tourism is to guarantee that improvement of a local area not only serves as an income for the country but also to the local people (Trejos and Chiang, 2009).
Economic Sustainability
According to this concept, by creating awareness of the local people, their culture, and environment, this will make visitors leave behind customs and resources that can be used to ensure growth of the local economy. Economic sustainability advocates for the use of local services and also buying of local goods as they help boost the local economy. To ensure sustainable tourism, the concerned people make every effort to include the local people in the management of funds from the visits. This will help ensure that most of the financial gains remain in the community as they are the owners of the resources. According to studies that have been done to establish the effectiveness of economic sustainability, it was evident that people are more encouraged to take good care of the local resources. When economic sustainability is maintained, this will ensure that there is growth both to national incomes and also to the individual members of the community (Howard, 2008).
Social Sustainability
Social sustainability is another branch of sustainable tourism. According to this concept, social features of sustainable tourism should give exceptional consideration to human rights. The concept argues that sustainable tourism should seek to increase the opportunities for all people in the society. While economic sustainability endorses the notion that tourism returns should remain in the local community, social sustainability pacts with the actual supply of these earnings. The core emphasis of this model is averting misuse of the corrected funds and ensuring that each member of the community gets an equal share. By ensuring fair distribution of the gained resources, social sustainability enhances equal growth among all beneficially (Randall, 1987).
Environmental sustainability
This is another model of tourism sustainability that is involved with the maintenance of the environment. According to this model, as much as we want the economic gain from the tourist, we also should be mindful of the local people in the community. In many tour countries, high percentage of the residents rely on these natural resources either food or their livelihoods. Past experience has revealed that many counties are only concentrating on the incomes from the tourist and forgetting that they are degrading the natural environment for the local people. This, in turn, has led to the increase poverty rate among people depending on these resources. This model argues that should this degradation continue, the country will not only degradation of the local environment, but also will slow the growth. This is because dilapidation will led to tourist not coming again (Eadington and Smith, 1992).
References
Trejos, B,. and Chiang, H. (2009). Local economic linkages to community-based tourism in rural Costa Rica. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 30(3), pp. 373-387.
Howard, Hilary. (October 26, 2008). "A New Effort for Sustainable Tourism". The New York
Randall, A. (1987). Resource economics, Second Edition. New York, USA: John Wiley and Sons.
Eadington, W.R., and V.L. Smith (1992). The emergence of alternative forms of tourism, in Tourism Alternatives: Potentials and Problems in the Development of Tourism. Pennsylvania, USA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
