Whilst the Cape Town Declaration provides guidelines for
economic, social and environmental responsibilities, it is fair to say
that it is often “not clear how responsible tourism or, more precisely, responsibility,
might be achieved” (Sharpley, 2013:384). Despite its focus
on practice, responsible tourism does not have clearly defined methods
for implementation (Blackstock et al., 2008), and in particular there is a
gap in relation to how social impacts should be managed in a focused
and systematic way using a range of strategies. Thus, the question remains
as to how responsible tourism can become more effective in
influencing how tourism businesses manage their social impacts in
practice. In this paper we investigate whether SIA can assist with this
challenge.