Barriers and policies affecting the implementation of sustainable tourism: the Portuguese experience

Abstract

This paper identifies and ranks the factors that hinder the implementation of sustainable tourism in a developing destination. It uses a Delphi method combined with Q-Sort technique with three rounds of ranking by experts and analyzes the results with the Kendall’s W test. It finds that the experts agreed on the most and least important factors, such as the lack of long-term vision, the lack of clear definitions, the lack of integration into government policy, the excessive bureaucracy and the economic priority versus environmental priority. It also finds that the experts disagreed on the other factors, showing a variation in opinions. It compares the results with the literature and confirms the importance of long-term vision, government integration, bureaucratic reduction and clarity in policies for sustainable tourism. The experts became more aware over the rounds, indicating progress in addressing the barriers. It concludes by presenting some policy-making guidelines for a tourism destination manager.