The aim of this paper is to present an alternative approach to sustainable tourism-derived from the human-centered angle. In line with this assumption, when considering the principles of sustainable tourism, the opinions of all groups of tourism actors, including host communities, tourists and tourism businesses should be taken into account equally with other factors, not merely as one of many decision makers, but as the main frame of reference. The research methodology is twofold. As regards the theoretical foundation, the model approach has been applied to conceptualize the intra-generational and inter-generational perspectives upon tourism sustainability. Consequently, the former is concerned with the problem of internal sustainability connected with the advantages achieved and disadvantages borne by tourism actors. The inter-generational perspective, on the other hand, is related to the problem of long-term tourism development under conditions of internal sustainability. In the empirical part of the research, the model was applied in a survey carried out in seven chosen areas in Poland. To this end, a set of auxiliary tools (an adopted Likert scale and a working matrix) was developed and positively tested in real-life conditions. The novelty of the study as a whole consists in the fact that it postulates taking into consideration the ‘human-centered perspective’ related to all groups of tourism actors, including who are not directly involved in tourism activity.

As a subject of scientific investigation, evaluations of the attractiveness of tourist destinations have had a relatively long history, particularly among geographers and regional economists. Based on mathematical and psychological principles and using methods that combine the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Preference Ranking Organization Method for Enrichment Evaluation (PROMETHEE) approach, this research project constructs an evaluation structure used for the assessment of European coastal and offshore areas for sailing tourism. A case study with a three-level evaluation structure has been defined and tested. It contains: at the top of the hierarchy an overall objective defined as the attractiveness of the European coastal and offshore areas for sailing tourism; six criteria of evaluation (on the second level); and ten coastal areas (at the bottom level). This structure covers almost all the coasts around Europe, as they were the subjects of evaluation and comparison. The evaluation was carried out by a group of experts who made the assessment taking into account previously determined criteria with weights. The findings indicate that the AHP-PROMETHEE method may be a useful tool to evaluate the attractiveness of different destinations. It can be also used for practical purposes, particularly to determine strengths and weaknesses, as well as the competitive position, of given coastal areas in relation to others.

Social constructionism is commonly understood as one of qualitative approaches in the social sciences. It takes the ontological viewpoint that the meaning of the social world cannot be discovered, but is rather constructed by humans along with their histories, societies, ideas and languages. Historically, social constructionism is anchored in Kuhn’s idea of the paradigm, but its foundations can be traced back to Kant’s philosophy of knowledge and his rejection of the naturalistic ‘tabula rasa’. Social constructionism as the main idea of ‘non-classical sociology of science’ has assumed relativity of knowledge, where knowledge is seen primarily as a social product. Thereby, it acknowledges the role of various perspectives created in different social circumstances. In tourism research, social constructionism started to develop in the 1990s and has become one of the dominant approaches among qualitative methodologies in the recent years. Paradoxically, social constructionism, which is based on the pluralism of perspectives, can also be used as a tool to maintain an advantage. This can be easily observed with respect to the production of knowledge on tourism. Analyzing the content of leading journals, we note that the dominant position is occupied (all too often) by one language, one tradition, one chosen set of research topics, and one group of scholars, who serve as the ‘gate keepers’ or ‘power-brokers’ of tourism knowledge. We find this problem important and believe that the described phenomenon can limit the freedom of research on tourism, which is illustrated through quantitative and qualitative analyses of the leading journals in terms of the represented traditions, languages, authors, and editors.

The aim of this paper is to propose a new-realist ontology of tourism; an ontology that could be used as a foundation for those social sciences which are ready to accept the moderate realist approach. To achieve this goal, an answer to the general question is sought: What is the nature of the tourism reality? This has been broken down into specific issues: What entities make up the domain of tourism? How are they formed and how do they exist in the world? What are their features? And finally: What are the epistemic consequences of the adopted solutions? Our answers are embedded in Searle’s social ontology and his concepts of biological naturalism and social Background. The proposed tourism ontology will also be able to serve as a competitive option to relativist approaches that seem to be gaining the upper hand in the current debate about the state of tourism research.

The traditional understanding of geographical space as a given place seems to be insufficient nowadays. It should be analyzed in a wider context of social, cultural, economic and environmental aspects and even psychological and emotional factors should be considered. It means that tourism space/destination, which has mostly been treated as a geographical domain, should also be studied as a set of similar factors. In this respect, any tourism space/destination is characterized by complexity and multi-dimensionality, which generate an ontological question concerning its nature. Taking these considerations into account, a research problem related to the essence of tourism space/destination as well as the possibility of its development has been formulated. The problem is followed by the hypothesis that the development of tourism space/destination is measured by the achievement of the state of tourism sustainability. In the empirical part, a method to assess the development of tourism space/destination has been proposed.

Embedding the issue of the recognition of tourism by the academia in the context of the scientific identity of the researchers of tourism can bring valuable insights into the debate. Moreover, such an approach is aligned with the main assumptions of social constructionism and the non-classical sociology of science (knowledge) stemming from the paradigm theory of science formulated by Kuhn. These concepts served as the foundations for the present research, allowing for the formulation of its main hypothesis: that every academic community has the right to decide whether it accepts tourism as a separate academic discipline or not, and that there is no reason why any opinion on this matter should be imposed on everyone. Another useful piece of information can be gained by adopting an epistemological perspective in the form of the questions: will separating tourism from other disciplines make it possible for us to learn more about it? Or should we continue considering it through the prisms of other disciplines? These were the premises which drove both parts of the present research: literature query and empirical study (which featured results from researchers from all around the world), and were addressed in the conclusion.