Linking Culture and the Environment

D. Ioannides 55
related developments, strict policing of informal-sector facilities and efforts
to enhance the destination’s appeal to higher-spending individuals and special-interest
groups. Nevertheless, other groups, including the national aviation
authority and the Cypriot hotel owner’s association, have continued to
respond to pressure exerted by major northern European tour operators and
taken actions contradicting this move towards quality (rather than quantity)
tourism. Both these bodies have continuously advocated the relaxation of the
government’s restrictions on charter carriers. The hotel owners, for instance,
are concerned about the alarming decline in occupancy rates resulting from
the ever-increasing oversupply of tourist accommodation establishments
and stagnating numbers of tourist arrivals. The efforts of these entrepreneurs
and other groups have led the government to grant an increased number of
licences to charter airlines, in turn resulting in a higher number of low- paying
tourists visiting the island. This situation has evolved into a constant vicious
cycle that stands in the way of implementing the prescribed policy for sustainable
tourism development.
Additionally, it is important to note that national or regional policies
geared towards up-market tourism as a means of promoting sustainability
usually prove counterproductive (Ioannides, 2006). Ioannides and Holcomb
(2001) indicate that Malta’s prescribed attempts to replace mass tourists with
up-market visitors are problematic because the necessary luxury-oriented
projects consume far more energy, water and land than traditional budgetoriented
establishments. Similarly, the support the CyTO has shown for the
development of a number of golf courses in an effort to diversify the Cypriot
tourism product has been particularly misplaced on an island facing severe
chronic water shortages (CyTO, 1990; Ioannides and Holcomb, 2003;
Ioannides, 2006).
Sustainable Tourism or Tourism in the Context of
Sustainable Development?
Certain authors believe the concept of sustainable tourism rests on uncertain
foundations since it focuses on a single sector, unlike the broader notion
of sustainable development that implies a multisectoral approach (Campbell,
1996; Butler, 1997). The single-sector focus (Coccossis, 1996; Butler, 1999) is
problematic in ‘the case of tourism, which is a diffuse activity with farreaching
implications for many other sectors and activities’ (Wall, 1997, p.
34). As Buhalis and Diamantis (2001) maintain, an emphasis on sustainable
tourism alone ‘creates “tourism-centric” situation, where most of the
approaches become partially divorced from the main principles of the sustainability
concept’. According to Buhalis and Diamantis, ‘decision-makers
concentrate on tourism development as a short-term strategy, tending to
neglect . . . the long-term prosperity of regions’. A major stumbling block
is that many groups, including tour operators, hotel owners and governmental
agencies, adopt a narrow view of sustainability for a destination
without regard to tourism’s interconnections with other sectors, such as