A Literature Review on Sustainable Tourism

With the globalization that emerged after the Industrial Revolution, countries took steps towards growth. As a result of the steps taken, some imbalances have emerged between the understanding of production and consumption. The reason for these imbalances is that the consumption and production rates do not show parallelism. Consumption has increased over time. However, while there was an increase in consumption, a new one was not produced so quickly to replace the consumed one. The progressive increase in consumption has caused the society to be concerned about sustainability. Sustainability is defined as the state of being able to sustain itself without depleting the essential resources of the ecosystem and society, or more generally of any ongoing system. Sustainability is important for the tourism sector as it is for every sector. Tourism is considered a resource-intensive industry and is considered one of the largest industries in the world. Tourism activities are in close relationship with the socio-cultural, ecological, political and economic environment. For this reason, tourism must be accountable in terms of sustainability on both a local and global scale. In this research, it is aimed to raise awareness in the field of tourism related to sustainability. In the research, the concepts of sustainability and sustainable tourism are examined in detail, and the importance of sustainable tourism is discussed comprehensively. In the study, exemplary approaches to why and how sustainable tourism should be developed for Turkey have been tried to be defined.