2. Sustainability assessment review by case studies
This section examines 12 case studies of sustainability assessment in tourism. The purpose of this review is to determine whether the case studies used explicit sustainability assessment methods or models to evaluate the performance quality of STD. The main focus of the review is to examine whether or not specific criteria were selected to determine the possibility of sustainable tourism in a given destination. Twelve case studies, each of which arrived at a conclusion regarding whether a destination was ‘sustainable’ or ‘unsustainable’, were selected. Studies that did not determine whether a case-study area was ‘sustainable’ or ‘unsustainable’ were not included in this review. Tourism and environment journals and texts were used as information sources to identify suitable case studies. Initially, studies published in the period 1992–2000, which were concerned with sustainability, and which involved empirical study of a specific tourist destination, were identified. Those studies that presented a specific conclusion regarding the sustainability of a destination were then selected. In the process, it was found that few of the published studies utilised specific sustainability assessment methodologies; thus, 12 studies that presented more detail in their methodology than others, were finally selected for the present analysis. However, given the rapid development of the field, all relevant studies may not have been identified, especially more recent ones. It is, however, believed that the studies selected are suitably representative of studies conducted during the period.