Chapter 4 Social Responsibility

Abstract

Tourism has positive and negative impacts. With scant attention on the ground often accorded to the negative impacts, and a great deal of emphasis on the positive benefit, too little thought is given to the net benefit, and who captures it. Tourism cannot be isolated from other economic sectors, and the tourism sector is only part of the economic and social activity occurring in a particular local environment. It is a central tenet of Responsible Tourism that sustainability is a local challenge: it is a challenge nearly everywhere but the solutions are local. Responsible Tourism is about engaging with the particular issues that arise in particular places as a consequence of tourism. If sustainability is about balancing the needs of environment, communities, visitors and the tourism sector, the optimal balance will be determined in destinations by the people who live there. That said, it is important to learn from experience elsewhere.