“Sustainability” has endured as an important concept for tourism scholars, and volumes have been written about how to achieve this holy grail of the tourism industry. Sustainable tourism destinations are often promoted as the ethical choice for discerning travellers, with some marketers taking full advantage of the widely acknowledged ambiguities implicit in the term. More recently “resilience” has generated appeal in the academic tourism literature as a term that might capture core aspects of sustainability, while acknowledging the considerable influences that multiple contexts have on the capacity of communities to adapt and ultimately sustain their tourism enterprises. The resilience concept encompasses an inclusive and integrative “social ecological systems” approach which gives it a firm interdisciplinary underpinning in its application in tourism. While in a tourism context sustainability and resilience are kindred terms, relatively little scholarly effort has been committed to a critical treatment of these concepts. Addressing this deficiency, we present a conceptual model to discuss the relationship between sustainability and resilience in tourism. Drawing on examples from New Zealand's nature-based tourism sector, this conceptual paper explores the insights that a critical treatment of the sustainability–resilience nexus might offer both academics and practitioners in the field of tourism studies.

The Franz Josef and Fox Glacier townships in New Zealand's "Glacier Country", neighbouring Westland National Park, are remote tourist attractions facing multiple future sustainability challenges. Despite their distance from their markets, they attract 600,000 visitors annually and are fundamental to the district's economy. However, issues of geographic isolation are compounded by major threats of flooding and earthquake, rising fuel prices and climate change scenarios which imply serious glacier melting. Using 24 stakeholder interviews, this study evaluates susceptibility to change at multiple scales which could undermine the economic and social longevity of this iconic destination. Adopting a human-environment systems perspective, it utilises the concepts of vulnerability and resilience to examine dimensions of change and response that have shaped the community, conservation and tourism in this peripheral region. It finds high levels of vulnerability do not necessarily determine low levels of resilience, nor vice versa. Rather than mutually exclusive, vulnerability and resilience are discrete, but highly compatible concepts, offering much to the analysis of protected area tourism facing global change. The paper notes the potential guidance and governance role of the protected area in building resilience, and equally the threat to the protected area's integrity if tourism is compromised by its vulnerabilities.No Full Tex

For more than 100 years, the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers in Westland Tai Poutini National Park have attracted thousands of tourists annually and have emerged as iconic destinations in New Zealand. However, in recent years, the recession of both glaciers has been increasingly rapid and the impacts on, and implications for, visitor experiences in these settings remain relatively unexplored. A mixed-method approach was adopted to investigate visitor experiences and stakeholder perspectives through an assessment of climate-related changes on tourism at the glaciers in Westland Tai Poutini National Park. The bio-physical conditions at both the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers were reviewed in order to assess the magnitude and rate of retreat. Perceptions of climate change risk and awareness of impacts in the National Park were assessed through stakeholder interviews (n = 13) and a visitor survey (n = 500) was used to better understand how impacts at these sites have affected and may continue to affect visitor experiences. Research results were reported to local communities via a series of public talks. Results revealed the fundamental importance of viewing the glaciers as a significant travel motive of visitors, suggesting that there is a ‘last chance’ dimension to their experience. Furthermore, the results demonstrate a high adaptive capacity of local tourism operators under rapidly changing environmental conditions. The implications of altered visitor experiences for tourism operators and protected area managers are discussed in light of these findings.