Tourism development of the cyclades Islands: Economic, social and carrying capacity assessment and consequences

Abstract

The tourist industry is one of the most important economic activities in Greece. The country receives over 32 million visitors per year. Greece has enjoyed increasing numbers of people and revenues from tourism, due to the unique environments that are both natural and man-made that make it a high-profile tourist destination; however, it is already clear that uncontrolled growth of the industry may bring serious environmental and social problems, leading to a decline in the quality of tourist product and services provided. According to the triple bottom line (TBL) philosophy developed by Elkington (1998), sustainable tourist development must be balanced at the same time with economic, social and environmental aims, from a microeconomic point of view, as tools to measure environmental impact. The Prokopiou-Tselentis model is an integrated assessment system for environmental management and impact estimation of a tourism destination. In this paper, we propose the implementation of the Prokopiou-Tselentis model as the economic, social and tourism situation demands data to estimate the development of tourism and its impact on the Greek islands of Cyclades.