Our Future Destinations: Backcasting for Sustainable Tourism

Abstract: The tourism industry has continuously grown in the last fifty years, promoted economic growth and created jobs (UNWTO, 2017). Nevertheless, this industry is impacting and greatly stressing natural environments and societies inciting a transformation towards a more sustainable form of tourism practices (Williams & Ponsford, 2009). The United Nations General Assembly declared 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development (UNWTO, 2016). The purpose of the declaration was to position the tourism industry as a tool to address the Universal 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UNWTO, 2016). A backcasting participatory approach was used to explore the roles of the SDGs in creating future sustainable tourism destinations, using Swedish Lapland as a reference. The study uses backcasting as a method together with a literature review and semi-structured interviews to key stakeholders. The study concludes that SDGs are good parameters to describe current scenarios in order to develop desired ones. It also finds that sustainable future tourism destinations are highly connected with environment and society as part of the core experience, resecting traditions and culture. In order to achieve sustainable future destinations legislation, better practices and alternative methods of transportation need to be implemented alongside creating an experience that is based on responsibility towards nature and societies.