SUSTAINABLE TOURISM DEVELOPMENT AND ITS ECONOMIC IMPACT: BALANCING GROWTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY THROUGH INTEGRATED ACCOUNTING, STANDARDS, AND DESTINATION GOVERNANCE

Abstract

Tourism growth can generate employment, export earnings, and local economic development, yet it can also create environmental pressures and social frictions when benefits and burdens are unevenly distributed across places, seasons, and communities. Global policy frameworks explicitly place “sustainable tourism” within the 2030 Agenda, including targets to promote sustainable tourism that creates jobs and supports culture, and to develop tools to monitor tourism sustainability impacts.  However, destinations frequently face a practical bottleneck: sustainability is difficult to manage when it is not measured using consistent, decision‑relevant indicators that integrate economic and environmental dimensions. Official measurement standards address this gap by linking the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) with the System of Environmental‑Economic Accounting (SEEA), and more recently through the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (SF‑MST), endorsed in 2024 as a holistic structure for organizing tourism’s economic, social, and environmental data.