Sustainable Tourism Development Needs in the Southern African Context: Concluding Remarks

This chapter concludes the critical aspects of and research needs in sustainable tourism development. The various cases and illustrations in this book demonstrate some of the success factors and challenging issues in the discourse of sustainable tourism development and how to implement it in local contexts. While there are many policies and strategies in southern Africa aiming to support and encourage the sustainability of tourism development, the relationships between the tourism industry and localities are often complex, emphasising economic dimensions over social and environmental ones. Despite the challenges, however, the past research and the case examples of the book demonstrate that it is possible to create synergies between tourism and localities in sustainable development. We conclude that a critical framework for this is founded on the better implementation of tourism development to serve the SDGs, as connections are still under-developed in the region. Better performance calls for more inclusive tourism development approaches to support more resilient tourism and tourism-dependent communities in regions.