The Journey Towards Sustainable Tourism : A Case Study About Gotland’s Cruise Quay Project

Abstract: The decision has been made: The new cruise-ship quay in Visby will soon be an essential part of the Swedish island Gotland. This can be a great deal not only in regard to Gotland’s Vision 2025 and its citizens but also for Gotland as a tourist destination and its sustainable tourism development. Therefore, the aim of this study was to explore which sustainable considerations and goal settings Gotland’s municipality emphasised in the decision process of construction a new cruise-ship quay in Visby. Besides, we intended to raise awareness of discussing the cruise project from a sustainable tourism development perspective. This study explored the decision process through an overarching sustainability lens with the help of the triple bottom line (TBL) concept. The analysis was based on a triangulation of protocols and reports, meetings and semi-structured interviews with different key actors. This study contributes to the existing tourism literature by adopt the TBL concept on a political setting. The empirical contribution was to better understand and explain the results normally used by organisations from a broader, more holistic sustainable tourism development perspective. An overall conclusion from our study is that the planning and decision process for building a cruise quay in Visby has left residents not involved in the industry with split reactions. The case study reveals that public participation and public information throughout the decision process is essential to the public legitimacy.