Sustainable tourism as an adaptive paradigm

Despite owing its origins to the general concept of sustainable development, the subject of sustainable tourism appears to have evolved largely in isolation from the continuing debate on the meaning of the former. This paper argues that such isolation has resulted in the emergence of an overly simplistic and inflexible paradigm of sustainable tourism which fails to account for specific circumstances. It is suggested that the concept of sustainable tourism be redefined in terms of an over-arching paradigm which incorporates a range of approaches to the tourism/environment system within destination areas. These approaches are outlined for a variety of abstract situations with the aim of demonstrating the legitimacy of different perceptions of sustainable tourism.