Should tour operators take responsibility for addressing destination level sustainability?

The first 200 words of this essay...

"Should tour operators take responsibility for addressing destination level sustainability?"

For several years, there has been much deliberation concerning who ought to be accountable for ensuring that tourism destinations are developed in a way that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (WCED 1987, p.7). Due to the numerous stakeholders involved where destination level sustainability is concerned, it is particularly difficult to decide who, if any, holds more responsibility than another. This essay shall address the various stakeholders and attempt to give reasoning as to whether or not it is just to judge tour operators as being more liable than any other interested party in the tourism industry to encourage sustainability.

Tourism has both positive and negative impacts on destinations and their inhabitants. Whilst benefiting from an increase in revenue, job creation, improvements in infrastructure and amplified awareness of local people and their environments, destinations simultaneously suffer from exhaustion of resources, lack of respect for local cultures, disturbance of indigenous communities, and perhaps most significantly, a rapidly increasing pollution rate as a result of development of areas to meet the needs of tourists. In order to