This study examines sustainable tourism products in tourism destinations. Based on concepts of sustainable product design, our study proposes a framework for sustainable tourism products by adapting an existing Design for Sustainability Framework to consider and analyze the characteristics and themes of sustainable (tourism) products as well as their impact and scope. Using a pragmatic qualitative approach, 15 semi-structured interviews with destination managers from the German-speaking Alpine region formed the empirical basis of the study. The results emphasize key themes and multiple characteristics associated with sustainable tourism products in tourist destinations, addressing all sustainability components and design innovation levels. This study is the first to apply existing sustainable product design concepts to destination contexts and discuss their applicability for sustainable tourism products. For practitioners, this study provides support for the development of sustainable tourism products and contributes to a better understanding of the effects and levels of these products as well as sustainability marketing.

Destination managers frequently describe strategies, plans, or projects in destinations as part of an overall commitment to sustainable development or sustainability in the destination. The meaning of the term sustainability, however, is highly contested in both academia and practice, and it is not at all clear what destination managers mean when they claim to act in the interests of sustainable tourism. This paper assesses the concept of sustainability and its operationalisation by destination managers at the regional destination level. Our international, comparative study examines two destination regions that emphasise nature-based tourism, the Tyrolean Oberland, Austria, and the South Island of New Zealand. Twenty-two high-ranking destination managers representing 20 destinations were interviewed. We demonstrate how colloquial, academic, and applied interpretations of sustainability are tangled and intertwined in day-to-day destination management. The types of destination management interventions that are described as sustainable and the extent to which the economic component of sustainability is prioritised vary strongly across destinations and destination regions. The study results demonstrate that in order to achieve sustainability in destinations, stakeholders need to develop a shared understanding of what constitutes sustainable destination development, and how it can be meaningfully operationalised.

Since the announcement of the Icelandic Pledge in June 2017, destinations are increasingly turning to national destination pledges as a possible tool to address negative impacts caused by visitors. This article uses qualitative interviews with 17 stakeholders involved in the development and implementation of the full sample of national destination pledges at the time of the research (namely the Icelandic Pledge, the Palau Pledge, the New Zealand Tiaki Promise and the Sustainable Finland Pledge) as an empirical basis. It explores the catalysts for the development of national destination pledges including undesirable visitor behaviour, increasing visitor numbers and a desire to protect the destination and its people. It then demonstrates how national destination pledges are social marketing initiatives, which employ commercial marketing techniques to positively influence visitor behaviour. By analysing the social marketing strategies used by national destination pledges and linking these strategies to behaviour change literature, this paper demonstrates that pledges’ use of peer pressure, emotional engagement of visitors, and positive, targeted messaging are all characteristics that hold potential to influence visitor behaviour.

This empirically based article examines guides’ knowledge and skills acquisition. Using two cultural tourism attractions in New Zealand as field sites, the focus is on guides in cultural tourism contexts. Twenty-one semistructured in-depth interviews with guides and managers were conducted and analyzed using a social constructivist perspective. This article is thus among the first to add the voices of (Indigenous) guides to the discussions of guide knowledge acquisition and learning. The relevance of previous personal experience of guides, conceptualized as informal experiential (practice-based) learning and lifelong learning, is identified as critical in guided tour content selection and delivery, as well as in engagement with participants of a guided tour experience. Implications address power relationships, ownership of information and stories, and credibility of a message in (Indigenous) cultural tourism; the need to focus on recruitment of guides, and a call for perceiving guides as humans with a sophisticated, demanding, interpersonal role.