Sustainable Tourism Policy - Rejuvenation or a Critical Strategic Initiative

Many tourism destinations have historically been mass tourism destinations, focusing on sun, sea and sand package holidays. Destinations, particularly islands such as Malta and the Balearic islands in the Mediterranean have often been heavily developed on an ad-hoc basis during the 1960's and 1970s which has resulted in unplanned tourism resorts leading to much environmental and social degradation. Due to this degradation, these islands have been losing competitive advantage over other destinations and realise that both their tourism product and market is deteriorating. In response, they have developed sustainable tourism policies to counter this deterioration. This paper examines two island destinations which have attempted to implement a sustainable tourism policy: Malta and Calvia (on the island of Mallorca in the Spanish Balearics). Although different in terms of governance structure, many economic, social, environmental and political issues are compared which are similar in how they have affected successful movement towards more sustainable forms of tourism through policy development. The paper concludes with recommendations provided by stakeholders within the industry for moving towards more sustainable behaviour and provides insight into sustainable tourism policy implementation issues for other destinations.