The Sustainability of Ecotourism in Cambodia: A Case of Koh Phdao and Sampin Villages

摘要

There are two different standpoints of sustainable tourism development. One is tourism-centric and the other is sustainability-centric. The former is the paradigm in which the main goal of tourism is to continuously maintain its operation, rather thanto contribute to achieving sustainable development goals as a whole (Telfer & Sharpley, 2008). In the latter paradigm, sustainable tourism development is defined as tourism development that meets and contributes to the principles or the goals of sustainable development. Ecotourism emerged as an alternative to mass tourism in the late 1970s and the early 1980s when mass tourism received critical attention about its adverse effects. In the early 1990s, nongovernmental organizations working on conservation and community development began to use ecotourism as a tool for achieving both development and conservation goals, especially in the rural areas of developing countries. Fennel (2008) defines ecotourism as:[A] sustainable, non-invasive form of nature-based tourism that focuses primarily on learning about nature first-hand, and which is ethically managed to be low impact, non-consumptive, and locallyoriented (control, benefits, and scale). It typically occurs in natural areas, and should contribute to the conservation of such areas, (p. 24)