Exploring the interconnections between resilience and sustainability in the tourism industry, using case studies from nature-based tourism in New Zealand

Abstract

Over several decades now, ‘sustainability’ has endured as an important concept for tourism scholars. Sustainable tourism destinations are often promoted as the ethical choice for discerning travellers, with some marketers taking full advantage of the rich ambiguity implicit in the term. More recently, ‘resilience’ has generated appeal in the academic tourism literature as a term that might capture core aspects of sustainability, while acknowledging the considerable influences that environmental contexts (social, cultural, economic, ecological and physical) have on the capacity of communities to adapt to changing conditions and ultimately sustain their tourism enterprises.

While resilience has been characterised as a survival attribute, with emphasis placed on being future-oriented and adaptive, there is no guarantee that the decisions communities make in the interests of maintaining the short to medium term economic viability of their tourism enterprises will lead to outcomes that are desirable, responsible or sustainable in the long term.

Drawing upon recent empirical case studies of protected area tourism on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island, this paper considers the evidence of resilience among tourism stakeholders facing multiple environmental and economic risks, and reflects on the implications for sustainability. Of particular interest are the social adaptations that stakeholders have made as a result of exposure to risk. Through the development of a conceptual model, this paper considers what new insights the resilience-sustainability nexus might offer the study of tourism.