Responsible marketing for tourism destinations: Saint Catherine protectorate, South Sinai, Egypt

Abstract

In the tourism industry, environmental management is a critical component for sustaining competitive advantage (Barrett, 1992), starting to recognize environmental improvement as an economic and competitive opportunity, rather than an annoying cost or inevitable threat. Unfortunately, there has been no consistent approach to environmental marketing practices in tourism. Some destinations neglect their environmental obligations, perhaps due to lack of guidelines and examples of best practice, or perhaps because they don't understand the benefits. Others exploit environmental communication for short-term gains, or fail to tell visitors about their environmental initiatives (Wight, 1994). A field survey was conducted based on qualitative approach, in order to investigate tourism and ecological experts 'opinions about specific environmental issues helping in applying responsible marketing for fragile areas. The purpose of the study is to highlight the complex relationship between tourism marketing and the environment protection responsibility and recommending environmentally responsible actions to Egyptian travel companies selling eco holidays, thus helping in the development of sustainable competitive strategies.