Sustainable tourism

Taking responsibility for sustainable tourism

Tourism is a highly successful but contested social phenomenon, performed broadly through the active engagement of people as consumers or service providers, policymakers and destination communities. Through our critical scholarship and multi-disciplinary approaches, we engage in a number of sustainable tourism initiatives that seek to take responsibility for and make a difference to the quality of decision making that underpins the development and management of tourism.

Sustainable development priorities are reshuffled in relation to many factors including:

  • the circular economy
  • political agendas
  • local populations’ needs
  • levels of power
  • social justice and inclusion
  • gender mainstreaming
  • protection of local heritage and natural resources
  • ethics of production and consumption
  • poverty reduction and climate change

all of which are dimensions directly or indirectly embedded in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Rio+ Agendas.

Within the sustainable tourism development realm, we work as an open pool of interdisciplinary researchers including academics and practitioners, undertaking critical research and co-constructing expert advice for a number of development agencies, governments’ ministries, private and third sector organisations at local, national and international levels.

Read the article from Professor Marina Novelli and collaborators in The Conversation entitled Overtourism: a growing global problem.

Read the article featuring Professor Marina Novellli on Forecast: Trends and Opportunities that will Shape Africa’s Travel and Tourism in 2019

Examples of public engagement with the sustainable tourism agenda

Circular Brighton & Hove and The Visitor Economy 

Photo of participants at the Circular Economy event

Following the publication of the Brighton & Hove City Council (BHCC) Economic Strategy in December 2018, Circular Brighton & Hove worked with the council and the University of Brighton Responsible Futures team to deliver on its commitment to ‘Create a Circular Economy (CE) Framework, incorporating SDGs, for key themes for the Brighton & Hove Region’.

Find out more about our contribution to the Visitor Economy Summit in 2019.

Wish You Were Here – March 2018 – Bexhill-On-Sea

Wish you were here event poster

With support from Responsible Futures and organised by the Green Growth Platform, this event considered how tourism businesses could make the most out of current consumer trends. Wish You Were Here was exclusively for hotels, attractions and places to stay.

Delegates heard about:

  • The most important consumer trends in tourism right now.
  • How to market their business to attract even more loyal visitors.
  • How to make sure that they’re on top of one of the key trends – green tourism.
  • How working with local suppliers is key to success.
  • How to get money to develop their business, through government business growth grants.

This event was part of the Low Carbon Across the South East project, funded by the European Regional Development programme 2014-2020.

More information about the day including presentation and media here.

Find out more about our Responsible Futures initiatives.

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