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Abstract
Strategic planning is an acknowledged caveat of the sustainable tourism planning approach and is considered imperative in ensuring that a destination's resources are managed and sustained for the future, while still responding to environmental, financial, community and tourist needs. Yet some authors have claimed that there have been no previous attempts to gauge the extent to which strategic planning actually underpins real world tourism planning processes. To address this gap, a study was undertaken to examine the extent to which strategic planning, as a contributor to sustainable development, is incorporated in the tourism planning and management initiatives of tourism destinations. The research utilised qualitative semi-structured interviews with 31 participants from five tourism destination planning processes in Queensland, Australia. The respondents identified many benefits of engaging in a specific tourism planning exercise yet noted numerous challenges that were inhibiting the process. Importantly, some respondents attributed the lack of strategy in strategic planning to the fact that the negative impacts of tourism have yet to be experienced in their respective destinations. This confirms assertions that where the tourism industry does plan, there is a tendency to revert to short-term perspectives focused on more immediate outcomes. These results support the notion that sustainable tourism policies may give the appearance of a paradigm shift but in reality are focused on the traditional concern of financial returns.
Keywords: Strategic planning, sustainable tourism.
Introduction
Sustainable tourism has come to represent and encompass a set of principles, policy prescriptions, and management methods, which chart a path for tourism development such that a destination's environmental resource base (including natural, built, social and cultural features) is protected for future development (Welford & Ytterhus, 2004). Sustainability is often referred to in terms of the metaphorical 'triple bottom line', referring to the equal consideration of economic, social and environmental goals and outputs. In this respect the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) (1993, p. 11) considers that tourism is sustainable when it "improves the quality of life of the host community; provides a high quality of experience for the visitor; and maintains the quality of the environment on which both the host community and the visitor depend". Yet such things do not happen automatically and require a focused and deliberate process of decision-making and planning...