image: Catalina Ávila LaFrance
Tourism has a significant impact on much of the world. From the host to the visitor, we are all in one way or another shaped by tourism. While tourism’s positive effects include job creation, poverty alleviation, education, environmental preservation, and cultural exchange, tourism’s negative consequences–crime, loss of cultural identity, environmental degradation, species endangerment, and global warming–have proliferated in the last 30 years.
To counteract tourism’s negative side, we need to discuss what sustainable community development means within communities affected by tourism. Such a discussion must also include the steps that can be taken to ensure that those communities flourish with tourism as one part of a whole, rather than rely solely on tourism. After all, the changes that tourism brings about can be part of any community’s growth into a sustainable community.