Calling into operation a ‘dispersal’ strategy creates little difficulty for the pro-
vision of accommodation for increased numbers of tourists, and, or also, for the
management of increased tourism impacts. What is more challenging, and
requires greater care and preparation, is the mitigation of strains on host con-
viviality, avoiding debasement of the host religious sporting and cultural ethos,
ameliorating host denial of access to their own environmental hegemony, and a
diplomatic handling of visitor offences whether these take the form of cultural,
colonialist, unacceptable dress (undress!) behaviour, or what might be described
as flashy fiscal ignorance and arrogance. The absorptive capacity of an overall
physical landscape is enormous, whereas the absorptive capacity of any given
spot attraction or community has discernible limitations.
An ‘Index of Tourism Invitation’ via Mathieson and Wall (1982 – connecting
with Doxey’s ‘Irridex Model’ 1975) categorizes four levels of social absorptive
capacity, ranging from ‘euphoria’ through to ‘apathy’, ‘irritation’ and ‘antago-
nism’. These conditions arise as a consequence of local community perceptions
about social (cultural) and environmental loss and degradation. This potential
for conflict can lead to a decline in tourist receipts, which lends emphasis to
such matters as tourism number-balance, activity-harmony, and conservancy-
development addressed within a quota framework.
Sustainable tourism specifics A generic yet misleading label assigned
to sustainable tourism activity is eco-tourism. This can be mis-
leading because eco-tourism is seldom solely ecological, although
it can approximate local sustainability. Sustainable tourism is a
style of nature-based encounter which seeks to achieve host gain,
some social enrichment both ways, and a conservation of the cul-
tural and natural heritage. What sustainable tourism comes down
to is environmental and cultural resource ‘invasion’ of an inten-
sity which can be tolerated and managed without adverse effects.
This must be organized in a manner which generates economic
gain, yet impacts benignly upon the socio-cultural scene and the
natural-heritage landscape.
A general connotation is that eco-tourism is environmentally friendly –
sometimes indicated by it being styled as nature-based tourism – which it is
certainly intended to be, although there are other dispersal, small-scale and pace-
reducing factors which extend benefits from this style of tourism into the wider
community and the general economy. The contrast between hard and soft tourism
has been represented by Krippendorf (1982) along the lines re-expressed in figure
4.7 as Hard tourism and soft tourism.
There is also a need on the Demand Side for eco-tourism encounters of the sus-
tainable kind to be small-scale, diversified, humanized, stimulating, physically
challenging and above all within the absorptive capacity of the culture and envi-
ronment being visited.^37 This is a topic aired in the Richard Voase text (1995)
Tourism: The Human Perspective. The provider sets out to create nature-based attrac-
tions and culture-generated events which are experiential and enriching, even
Growth Pattern Management 175Urry (2002) identifies a
‘shift from “old tourism”
which involved packaging
and standardisation, to
“new tourism” which is
segmented, flexible and
customised.’
See also New Tourismby
Roger Bray and Vladimir
Raitz, 2001.