We argue that a new, pragmatic and business-focused social impact
management system, which is shaped by real world operational constraints,
is needed to support tourism businesses to identify practical
procedures to further embed the responsible management of their social
impacts into their existing sustainability management approach/
measures, organisational structures, planning, product development
and operational processes and activities. In our research, we have
made adaptations to the SIA method to develop such an approach,
which we have trialled in a tourism operation in Bulgaria. Before describing
this, however, we need to give some background on social impact
assessment and how it was envisaged it could be applied and add
value in the context of responsible tourism.