Clustering the Problems of Sustainable Tourism Development in a Destination

Over the last decades, Tourism has become one of the leading industries in Georgia in terms of generating income, compensation of the country’s trade deficit and rising employment of local population. However, tourism lacks development in the mountain region of the country. On-going re-development requires new approaches for the industries’ sustainable development . The purpose of the study is to apply the method of transdisciplinary research to identify interrelated core problems hampering sustainable tourism development. The research employed a case study approach. The method was tested at mountain resort of the Caucasus – Tsaghveri (Borjomi Minicipality). The initial information for the research was collected from the data received in the course of fieldwork organized by Austrian University BOKU and Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU) in Georgia in July 2018. The study revealed four categories of the destination related problems: leverage, critical, buffering and restricted. The outcome of analysis serves as preliminary information for the problem-solving strategy as well as for making decisions on rational development of destinations. The research gave opportunity to the involved parties to develop skills of participatory research for structuring complex problems.