This paper offers a preliminary start to inform the development of a robust framework for
sustainable tourism marketing (STM), informed theoretically as well as practically by empirical
study of tourism impacts. We argue here for the development of an integrated, eco-cultural, and
ethical approach to tourism marketing and research, i.e., a new paradigm (framework) for
sustainable tourism marketing that is responsible to the social and cultural well-being of people
in tourism destinations, in addition to the environmental and economic sustainability of spaces
and places of visitation.
Despite so much better understanding of representation, commodification, exclusion and
other inequities and injustices related to the appropriation and use of natural and cultural
resources, marketing research and practices has not proffered measures to ensure fair treatment
of these intangible aspects. So, what ethical principles guide responsible marketing decisions in
this domain? Key guiding principles in this paradigm should include not only collaboration and
partnership between marketing organizations and other industry stakeholders, but also greater
attention to those who reside in the places being commodified for sale and consumption.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has to expand to include cultural responsibility and ecocultural
justice. Here, the issue is not merely how destination cultures places are represented and
interpreted, packaged and advertised (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1997), but also by whom and with
whose permission (dare we say, oversight?).
Inclusion and direct participation is an important principle of sustainable tourism, and so
it should be for sustainable tourism marketing: active participation of local (community)
residents and diverse cultural groups in tourism marketing. This is not as difficult as it first
sounds, for the “p” that stands for product development should, in tourism destinations, involve