More or Less Sustainable? Assessment from a Policy Perspective

Sustainability of tourism destinations has become the main focus in planning and managing tourism development. Despite existing legislation and an institutional framework to safeguard balanced tourism growth, many destinations fail to properly address it. So far, studies are limited in exploring sustainable tourism impacts from a policy perspective. This study follows previous ones in using the triple bottom line sustainability approach to define tourism impacts. It argues, in particular, for a nexus between understanding of policy perception and sustainability, and it applies this to tourist destinations in Serbia to determine whether they are operating sustainably. For this purpose, the data were collected using а combination of multiple methods, involving interviews with policymakers and content analysis of strategic documents. This study further suggests a model that assesses the extent of the sustainability of tourist destinations. The results illustrate the importance of understanding policy perceptions in shaping and facilitating sustainability and informing policy enablers on how to improve and reform current tourism development. The model can be adopted and applied to any tourist destination facing an inevitable need to re-shape their tourism development plans and policies, while the implications address the need to build a participative policy approach to sustainable tourism development.