Monitoring system for sustainable tourism in Swiss Alpine Regions. Tools for regions to act on their own initiative

Self-sustaining ecologies, societies and economies in the alpine regions are essential for cultural and landscape preservation as well as for ongoing development. Particular attention must be paid to regional economy development and the role of tourism. In many alpine regions tourism is a very important economic factor to the local people, and may even be the only source of primary income from outside the region. It is assumed that the importance of tourism for economic development in the alpine regions will increase in future. Theories about regional sustainable development state, the regional level (or destination level as to say in tourism) is dedicated to conjoin the global concept of sustainable development and the intention of putting it into action. The paper outlines the foundation and structure of a monitoring system for sustainable tourism development. In the second section, the basic concepts are explained and the role of tourism in regional development is described b means of current trends in the Swiss mountain areas. A brief overview of more recent literature provides a somewhat more in-depth understanding of the concept of "sustainable tourism development." Finally we present our concrete plan for sustainable tourism development in (Swiss) Alpine regions. Normative and strategic goals were formulated for this plan.
Online: http://www.jyu.fi/ersa2003/cdrom/abstracts/a271.html