Sustainable tourist

Home (1992) has argued for the development of the tourist role in terms of there being a new style of intelligent tourist - one who appreciates the culture and history of the places visited. Similarly, and working within the tradition of sustainable tourism studies, Swarbrooke (1999a) has outlined the basic role responsibilities of the tourist and the extra role responsibilities of the sustainable tourist. The role prescriptions are presented in Table 2.1. 

The focus of this chapter is tourists on-site experiences with the sites and settings they visit. A major emphasis in this chapter lies in understanding and promoting sustainable tourist behaviours. 

This account of tourists on-site behaviour is organised by initially presenting a simple integrative model of place. This neat summative approach is then used to structure the discussion on experientially enhancing features of visited destinations. Attention is directed both to specific attractions and to the broader natural and social environment. Two special topics pertaining to the on-site visit experience will themselves be visited visitor skills and authenticity. The importance of sustainable on-site behaviours is then identified, and a number of mechanisms to enhance sustainable tourist behaviours outlined. Interpretation, and the conceptual scheme of mindfulness to underpin the work on interpretation, are reviewed. Finally, tourist behaviour at a specific location, Australia s Kangaroo Island, is considered. The discussion of this site will cast it as a microcosm of Australian tourism and a globally useful exemplar of tourists on-site experiences. 

In Chapter 2, the work of Swarbrooke (1999a) was cited as defining the role responsibilities for sustainable tourist behaviour. It was noted that it was difficult to carry out some of these behaviours (such as boycotting exploitative businesses) owing to the complexities of appraising local practices and standards. More simply, ignorance of local customs and skill deficits, as discussed in this chapter, as well as intentionally selfish behaviours, may all be contributors to undesirable on-site actions. 

Figure 6.1 Tourist sites, a tripartite sustainability embedded place model...

Instead of simply prescribing generically-desirable ideal roles as Swarbrooke and others have done, one can adopt a more explicitly remedial and practical approach. Middleton (1998) has identified lORs for environmental actions for the tourism industry as a whole. These suggestions may be re-applied to tourist behaviour itself and represent a comprehensive action-oriented approach to maintaining the sustainability framework of tourist settings. These actions are presented in Table 6.2. 

Regrettably, a global consciousness and an awareness of sustainability issues are not reliably pursued by tourists in many contexts. As a consequence of the impacts of tourist behaviour briefly reviewed at the start of this chapter, governments and public management agencies have instituted a set of control and influence mechanisms to shape negative tourist behaviours that alter on-site experiences for all participants. Five such mechanisms can be identified. 

Re-educate Long-term changes to personal behaviour resulting from tourist experiences may help the overall sustainability effort, e.g.when they get home, tourists may stop their long-term use of plastic recently experienced as a hazard to marine tourism... 

It is essential to the theme of this chapter that quality interpretation shapes visitors on-site experiences and helps promote sustainable behaviour. There is only limited evidence for this claim, and more work needs to be carried out more creatively in this area. In a number of individual studies learning and educational efforts as well as enjoyment have been demonstrated as mutual outcomes of interpretive efforts (Moscardo, 1998). Additionally, interpretation can clearly structure a visitor s time at a site, both in the activity itself and in the ways in which the material digested shapes further on-site activity. It is less clear that tourist-related on-site interpretation fosters long-term behavioural changes that serve the overall conservation of the planet. Nevertheless for select groups predisposed to certain kinds of tourism, existing attitudes, appear to be consolidated (Lee, 2002). 

Interpretation, particularly when it induces mindfulness and therefore promotes learning, satisfaction and understanding, is one of the dominant contemporary techniques for influencing sustainable visitor behaviour. It is sometimes seen as a special category of persuasive communication (Pearce, 1988) and indeed the mindfulness model is conceptually very similar to central and peripheral processing models used in the attitude-change literature. Persuasive communication is employed in a variety of tourist behaviour applications and can essentially be understood with the same parameters used in Figure 6.3 to explain interpretation effectiveness. 

Travellers on-site experiences How travellers appraise and value on-site experiences. What techniques manage and shape tourists on-site experiences How do tourists use and respond to the information and interpretation to fulfil their motives and social goals Sustainability enhanced place model Authenticity and performance The concept Skilled performance Mindfulness... 

Little work, however, has addressed the rationale or sustainability of such projects. Global spectacle in the Gulf is closely related to the dependence on migrant labor and the polarization of wealth in the Gulf. In order to build, and then to provide the heavy service requirements of the attractions, hotels, restaurants and events, a city requires even more expatriate labor. In order to host and promote events or build global tourist attractions in the first place, the city also needs the super-rich. The Gulf has both of these requirements (Malecki Ewers, 2007). 

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