A global industry and an important tool for economic development, international tourism is facing an increasingly uncertain future. Global environmental change, including climate change; increasing fuel prices; and growing criticism from environmental and social interest groups are posing substantial challenges to the belief that international tourism can be sustainable at current rates and patterns of growth. This book therefore aims to answer the questions of if and how tourism can be a sustainable industry. The book concludes that sustainable tourism is possible but that it requires fundamental shifts in operations, systems and philosophies. The various contributions identify a number of means by which this can be accomplished but stress that sustainable tourism still has a long way to travel before it can reach its destination.

Dr. Stefan Gössling is research coordinator at the Centre for Sustainable- and Geotourism, Western Norway Research Institute, and an Associate Professor at the Service Management programme, Lund University/Sweden. He has been contributing author to the IPCC's 4th Assessment Report and has recently contributed to Climate Change and Tourism: Responding to Global Challenges (published by UNWTO-UNEP-WMO). Dr. C. Michael Hall is a Professor in the Department of Management, University of Canterbury, New Zealand and Docent in the Department of Geography, University of Oulu, Finland. Co-editor of Current Issues in Tourism he has published widely in the fields of tourism, environmental history and gastronomy, including research on social marketing, climate change and sustainable consumption. Dr. David B. Weaver is Professor of Tourism Research at Griffith University, Australia. He is author or co-author of over 80 refereed journal articles and book chapters as well as ten books on tourism management, sustainable tourism and ecotourism.