Sustainable tourism has become a widely adopted term that has allowed many tourism developments to take place under its rubric that are less than sustainable and have been located in sensitive areas that have not all been suitable for such development. The paper reviews the origin and shortcomings of the concept and some of the implications of the resulting problems. It argues for a more critical review of so-called sustainable forms of tourism and for a focus to shift towards increasing the resilience of destinations, particularly those in sensitive areas, in order to shield them from the effects of inappropriate or excessive tourism development.

This paper reviews the development of tourism to emphasize the fact that tourism, even ‘mass tourism’, is not a new phenomenon but process which has characterized human behaviour for many centuries, and is essentially iterative in nature. To understand it fully it is necessary to review what has gone before, along with the influences of factors such as technological innovation, and social and economic changes in societies. Similarly, academic research in tourism has a long history, despite the fact that some tourism scholars and students appear to think such research is a recent development. Tourism research is best thought of as an ongoing process with varying emphases and foci at different times, beginning with essentially factual case studies, followed by a period of extensive if somewhat shallow theoretical development, and the current situation with its paradoxes and fallacies. The paper concludes with noting the suggested divisions of tourism research between management (applied) and social (theoretical) approaches, and between sophisticated statistical analysis and highly personal descriptions, which leaves many academic researchers and those in the tourist industry frustrated and disappointed by the failure to study and help resolve the real problems of tourism and its development.

Volunteer tourism is a rapidly growing form of tourism which has a weak conceptual basis and which is generally defined rather simply in terms of participants’ actions while on holiday, ignoring elements such as reasons for participation, behaviour, and influencing forces. This article argues that an appropriate conceptual base for volunteer tourists is Campbell's ‘Hero's Journey’ and draws analogies between participants in volunteer tourism and the ‘Hero’ in Campbell's writings. The article discusses data on volunteer tourists, which reveals their self-expressed reasons for participating, and their specific situations. The data were collected by field research based on covert participation at an orphanage in Mexico. Volunteers interviewed revealed the traits explaining their participation in volunteer tourism that were similar to the characteristics and driving forces found in the participants on Campbell's ‘Hero's Journey’ and in medieval and classical myths. While participation in volunteer tourism may not match contemporary understanding of heroes and heroic behaviour, there is considerable similarity in reasons given by respondents for participating in the activity, and a conceptual model is developed to illustrate this.

One of the more recent forms of tourism to emerge is what has become known as Volunteer Tourism, the practice of individuals going on a working holiday, volunteering their labour for worthy causes. While volunteering is a well-established activity, the combination with tourism is relatively new and has already changed considerably over a very short period. This paper reviews the process by which volunteer tourism has developed, focusing on its transformation from an individual altruistic endeavour to a more commercial form of conventional tourism. The paper reviews the growth in number of websites devoted to volunteer tourism, and discusses the changes that have taken place in the content and focus of these websites, the locations used as destinations and the organisations they represent over the last two decades. It is apparent that over the last two decades the organisations offering volunteer tourist vacations have increasingly focused their attention on conventional commercial tourism markets which is a similar pattern of evolution to that of ecotourism. The paper concludes that volunteer tourism is likely to become increasingly diverse in scale, distribution and focus in the future, in the same way as ecotourism has broadened its market and appeal, but in so doing, will lose more of the distinctive features that characterized its initial form.

Sustainable Tourism as a paradigm of development originated from the convergence of several streams of thought nearly three decades ago. It has tended to follow a ‘smaller is better’ theme but there are significant questions about the saliency of this theme in a 21st world characterized by change, contentiousness, conflict and uncertainty. Sustainable tourism is often linked with ecotourism and a dependency on natural environments as a principal resource providing the basis for an experiential product. The rise of systems thinking has led to new, and potentially more useful insights, about tourism as an economic development strategy in this context. Questions about the future ability of sustainable tourism to spur not only progress but the advancement of knowledge are presented and debated in this probe. The probe begins with a presentation by Steve McCool who presents a brief history of the development of the concept of sustainable tourism, provides an overview of how 21st century conditions are significantly different than those in which the term arose and suggests a reformulation of the concept to one of enhancing resiliency in the face of stresses and strains on communities. Responses by David Weaver, Richard Butler, Ralf Buckley and Brian Wheeller suggest that academia has a poor record of performance in addressing the real life issues confronting the globe's economic woes through sustainable tourism. Several feel that global economic and political power are so overwhelming as to make debates on sustainable tourism irrelevant. McCool responds to these criticisms by suggesting that knowledge is the principal barrier to progress.

Air transport is an essential component of the tourism industry, and the number, frequency, and capacity of flight connections may influence the level of tourism demand, especially for island destinations. This paper evaluates the influence of air transport on tourism arrivals to selected islands in seven southern European Union countries to determine the nature of the relationship between tourist arrivals and air transport, specifically, whether air transport services generate tourism demand or merely enable touristic flows. The paper uses panel data and applies an econometric model with justifications for endogeneity and dynamic issues. Results show a moderate impact of transport infrastructures on generating additional tourist arrivals; however, the model shows that air transport is a prerequisite to developing tourism demand and is not the only determinant in increasing tourist arrivals. Tourist arrivals appear more a determinant than a consequence of changes in‐flight connections.