FROM DEVELOPMENT TO DECLINE. TRACING THE LIFE CIRCLE NOTIFICATIONS OF A DESTINATION

摘要

Tourism is a major activity in the Greek islands of the North Aegean sea. Its development during recent decades stopped the economic and demographic decline of the area. The paper develops a framework for the appraisal of tourism sustainability in the Greek islands, and it is concluded that the conventional tourist model, based on sun, sea and sand (3S), has failed to promote sustainability due to the limited economic benefits for host communities and growing environmental pressures, based on the theoretical scheme of the Early Warning System, the life cycle model. The latest trend in Greece and elsewhere is a shift from mass tourism to more environmental-friendly and sustainable forms of tourism. Policies to change tourism patterns in the Greek islands will need to take into consideration their unique characteristics, their existing realities, and to be based on the exploitation of the local natural and cultural resources in order to develop new forms of tourism. The purpose of this paper is to develop the generic principles of an electronic business tool in order to process the statistical data, using the right set of methods, identify the early warnings of decline of the product, identify types of new forms of tourism that are being developed, find the most appropriate method to statistical process and evaluate their impact.