Stakeholders in sustainable tourism development and their roles: applying stakeholder theory to sustainable tourism development

Sustainability has become an important topic and concept in relation to tourism planning and development. For sustainable tourism development to be successful stakeholders must be involved in the process. The questions that should be considered though are: (1) who should be considered stakeholders in tourism development, and (2) how should planners and developers involve stakeholders in the development of tourism? In order to provide answers to these questions this paper investigated sustainable tourism development and how stakeholder inclusion and involvement are incorporated in the basic concept of sustainable tourism development. This investigation was accomplished by reviewing and drawing conclusions from the literature. The discussion includes thoughts from both management and public participation perspectives. So who should be involved in the sustainable tourism development process? Based on the definitions that are used for sustainability and sustainable tourism four distinct groups are identified; the present visitors, future visitors, present host community, and future host community.