Sustainable Tourism: Introduction to the Thematic Block Ksenija Vodeb Guest Editor University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia ksenija.vodeb@fts.upr.si Helena Nemec Rudež Guest Editor University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia helena.nemec@fts.upr.si https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.14.3-5 Despite three decades of active and intense discussion of tourism sustainability in academia and in tourism practice, recent references have shown that there is still much room for progress in this research area. At this very moment of a new milestone for tourism and society as a whole, new circumstances have arisen that change our understanding and suggest new choices that shift the concept of sustainable tourism as we have known it. The pandemic can be seen as one of the challenges, and it offers an opportunity to rethink our understanding of sustainable tourism (Persson- Fischer & Liu, 2021). But, even before the pandemic, it was clear that sustainable tourism, as a fluid and com- plex paradigm, urgently requires a systematic shift in comprehension. It therefore seems timely to review the progress of this tourism development concept and explore its possible future directions (Nunkoo & See- tanah, 2019). Sustainable tourism is now considered the domi- nant development paradigm in tourism research (Ru- hanen et al., 2015; Bramwell & Lane, 2012), but it is rather inconstant and dynamic, which requires a pre- cise, continuous and appropriate approach. Indeed, there is a plethora of relevant academic papers on this topic, providing valuable knowledge and understand- ing of the concept, as well as strategies and instru- ments for sustainable tourism implementation. An ex- ample of sustainable tourism indicators, designed by theWorld Economic Forum, is the Global Sustainable Competitiveness Index (gsci), which was developed in 2012 as a subsection of the earlier well known and acknowledged Tourism and Travel Competitiveness Index (ttci). On the other hand, there still persists a critical gap between the theory and practice of sustain- ability in tourism. Moreover, the prevailing economic indicators used by the United Nations World Travel Organization (unwto) and many other tourism or- ganisations (national, regional, and local), profession- als and decision makers with a mindset that sustain- ability is merely an environmental issue, show how incomplete our knowledge and awareness of sustain- able tourism is. Furthermore, recent social and tech- nological changes in our society pose a great challenge and open new questions that need to be addressed and answered. Ruhanen et al. (2019) investigated how research on sustainable tourism has evolved in the more than thirty years since the publication of the Brundtland re- port. They show that the field of research has matured over the past five years to the point where empha- sis on climate change, modelling, values, behaviour and theoretical advancement in sustainable tourism have become important. Budeanu et al. (2015) pointed out the problem of low or even lack of criticality in sustainable tourism research and suggested the need for research contributions to improve adaptability to Academica Turistica, Year 14, No. 1, June 2021 | 3 Ksenija Vodeb and Helena Nemec Rudež Sustainable Tourism respond to and manage change under unpredictable circumstances. In a nutshell, they believe that the re- search conducted on this topic needs to be more effec- tive in the future, and provide tourism practitioners with concrete solutions and tools. Additionally, they assigned to tourism sustainability the transformative power of the wider society due to its interrelation- ships with other spheres of human life and the eco- nomic sectors. They concluded that (p. 16) the aca- demic world of tourism is a relatively small commu- nity and certainly one that is disproportionately tiny in relation to the size of the sector and its impacts. It would be necessary to bring additional academic ca- pacity to the subject in order to achieve a strong out- come that could help to develop a solid ground for its development and progress. Sharpley (2020) is very critical towards tourism and argues that its developmental role, unequal acces- sibility, degree of dependency, overconsumption and overproduction are the biggest challenges at the global level. The only solution he sees to reduce the use of fos- sil fuel in tourism in the future is to reduce air travel. Zhang and Chan (2020) problematised the vague con- ceptualisation of sustainable tourism and pointed it out as the reason for its ineffectiveness and under- performance in practice. They believe that sustain- able development is a resource-concerned ethic, which should be concerned with resources and human needs in each specific context. Conversely, Streimikiene et al. (2021, p. 265) sound much more optimistic by con- cluding that competitiveness, environmental and so- cial issues of sustainable tourism development can be addressed together by implementing innovations and fostering sustainable consumption principles. Provid- ing innovative tourism services to tourists, achieving a competitive advantage by contributing to welfare, sat- isfying the needs of local communities, and addressing sustainable development priorities of tourism destina- tions are achievable goals. Whether this shift in the current comprehension of sustainable development lies in the responsible be- haviour and actions of stakeholders, or in the bal- anced performance of these actions and collabora- tion between stakeholders, sustainable tourism as it was defined and understood three decades ago is no longer relevant due to the maturation of the concept. The collection of papers in this thematic block in- spired by the above discussion brings together selected papers presented at the International Tourism Con- ference Encuentros 2020 – Sustainable Destinations: Walking the Sustainable Talk. To ensure an even more diverse selection of articles on sustainable tourism, the call for papers was disseminated to the wider research community after the conference. Afterwards, many interesting manuscripts were submitted for publica- tion consideration, but the guest editors had to limit the number of papers selected in order to proceedwith the publication process for the most theoretically and empirically high-quality papers. This thematic block contains six articles authored by scholars fromdiverse geographic and research back- grounds addressing key issues in sustainable tourism: community participation, resident quality of life, icm principles of an island destination, climate change, en- vironmentally sustainable practices in hospitality and sustainable tourism competitiveness. The first research paper, ‘Community Participation in Sustainable Valorisation of Cultural Heritage: The Case of the Municipality of Vrsar’ by Kristina Afrić Rakitovac, Nataša Urošević and Nikola Vojnović, il- lustrates the role of community participation as an essential principle of sustainable tourism. It explores the perspective of the local community in relation to the sustainable valorisation of cultural and archaeo- logical heritage and finds that local stakeholders are interested in the sustainable development of cultural tourism that opposes the mass tourism that currently prevails. Furthermore, it confirms the aspiration of the community to be actively involved and informed in participatory models of heritage management. The findings of the research point to the need for knowl- edge capacity building and awareness raising among stakeholders and destination management in order to optimise the sustainable valorisation of heritage re- sources. The example of sustainable development of an is- land destination based on iqm principles by Aleksan- dra Krajnović, Ivica Zdrilić and Nikolina Miletić ex- plores its extent and factors influencing it on the Island of Pag among key tourism stakeholders. The research 4 | Academica Turistica, Year 14, No. 1, June 2021 Ksenija Vodeb and Helena Nemec Rudež Sustainable Tourism findings show unsatisfactory conditions of sustainable development due to mass tourism, extreme season- ality, excessive tourism construction and unbalanced development. The situation urgently calls for profes- sional destination management. The article titled ‘A Destination’s Social Sustain- ability: Linking Tourism Development to Residents’ Quality of Life’ by colleagues from Turistica, namely Emil Juvan, Eva Podovšovnik, Miha Lesjak and Jas- mina Jurgec, examines residents’ quality of life as a fundamental aspect of sustainable tourism develop- ment. The results show that interaction with tourists can play a more important role in life satisfaction than the level of tourism development. Besides this, the re- sults indicate that neither the level of tourism develop- ment nor the interactions with tourists predict the life satisfaction of hosts and their emotional well-being. The authors highlight that achieving social sustain- ability is significantly context dependent and suggest a mixed methodological approach for further research, combining a quantitative and qualitative approach. Tourismmanagement beliefs and attitudes towards climate change are addressed by Aleksandar Racz, Dora Smolčić Jurdana and Zvonimira Šverko Grdić, colleagues from Croatia. They point out that signif- icant change in sustainable development is possible by understanding attitudes and beliefs of managers in order to manage the risks and opportunities for change in unsustainable practices. The research find- ings have shown stronger pro-ecological attitudes and higher levels of ecological awareness regarding climate change among female managers, with tertiary educa- tion, greater professional experience and environmen- tally active individuals. From the other side of the world comes ‘A Study of Barriers of Environmentally Sustainable Practices in the Hotel Businesses in Punjab, India: Preliminary Findings’ by Baljit Kaur, with the aim of exploring the barriers of environmentally sustainable practices (esps) in the area of hotel business. The issue of sus- tainability examined from the perspective of the hotel industry points to the need for information sharing and environmental awareness between policy makers and managers, changing conventional work practices, developing positive environmental attitudes, strict en- vironmental legislation, and involving top manage- ment in implementation strategies. References Bramwell, B., & Lane, B. (2012). Towards innovation in sus- tainable tourism research? Journal of Sustainable Tour- ism, 20(1), 1–7. Budeanu, A., Miller, G., Moscardo, G., & Ooi, C.-S. (2015). Sustainable tourism, progress, challenges and opportu- nities: Introduction. Journal of Cleaner Production, 111 (b), 285–540. Nunkoo, R., & Seetanah, B. (2019). Innovation in sustainable tourism. Tourism Review, 74(2), 129–292. Persson-Fischer, U., & Liu, S. (2021). The impact of a global crisis on areas and topics of tourism research. Sustain- ability, 13(2), 906. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020906 Ruhanen, L., Weiler, B., Moyle, B. D., & McLennan, C. J. (2015). Trends and patterns in sustainable tourism re- search: A 25-year bibliometric analysis. Journal of Sus- tainable Tourism, 23(4), 517–535. Ruhanen, L., Moyle, C.-L., & Moyle, B. (2019). New direc- tions in sustainable tourism research. Tourism Review, 74(2), 138–149. Sharpley, R. (2020). Tourism, sustainable development and the theoretical divide: 20 years on, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 28(11), 1932–1946. Streimikiene, D., Svagzdiene, B., Jasinskas, E., & Simanavi- cius, A. (2021). Sustainable tourism development and competitiveness: The systematic literature review. Sus- tainable Development, 29, 259–271. Zhang, S., & Chan, E. S. W. (2020). A modernism-based in- terpretation of sustainable tourism. International Journal of Tourism Research, 22, 223–237. Academica Turistica, Year 14, No. 1, June 2021 | 5