SASUF Sustainability Forum 2024

Sustainble tourism development has been an imperative for global tourism the last 20 years.
However, the recent challenges in the tourism sector, including COVID-19, natural disasters,
financial instability, and political turmoil, has challenged the development and shifted focus to
other areas. For instance, resilience has become a crucial concept in the tourism field. The idea of
resilience originated from Holling's study of ecological systems, which investigated the ability of
natural systems to withstand disturbances caused by either natural or human factors.
In a tourism context, resilience describes the adaptive capacity of destinations to recover from
stressors, disturbances, or disasters of organizations and societies. There are, however, clear
connections between sustainability and resilience as both concepts deal with change.
Sustainability commonly deals with change based on conservation, while resilience deals with
change based on adaptation and transformation. In this workshop, resilience is addressed on
several different levels in the tourism system.
Inclusive tourism has emerged as an important issue to address issues of sustainability and
resilience. To enhance inclusive tourism marginalised groups needs to be included both as
producers of tourism products for others to experience as well as the possibility to be a tourist
themselves. However, to be inclusive entails a broad range of perspectives that need to be
addressed to incorporate different groups for sustainable tourism development. Resilience and inclusive perspectives are important to address in order to work towards some of
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), for instance: Goal 10, Reduced inequality; Goal 12,
Sustainable Cities and Communities; and 13, Responsible Production and Consumption.
The aim of this workshop is to present and discuss key challenges for sustainble tourism
development and identify avenues to go forward by drawing from current research and practice
from both the global south and north.
To advance knowledge about complex societal issues, such as sustainable tourism development, it
is important to apply an interdisciplinary approach that focus on the problem. The knowledge
(disciplines) relevant to the problem is more flexibly applied. Hence, this workshop welcomes
participants from different disciplinary backgrounds in order to find new forms of collaborations to
address sustainable tourism development.

The workshop wil be organised in the following way:
Part 1 (45 minutes)
• Welcome to this workshop, Maria Månsson, Lund University
Presents the aims of the workshop
• Speakers to present work in the field:
- Nicola Wakelin-Theron, University of Johannesburg, South Africa
- Maria Månsson, Lund University, Sweden
- Danie Marais, National Council of and for Persons with Disabilities (NCPD), South
Africa (on-line participation)

15 minutes break
Part 2 (60 minutes)
• Group discussions based on a world café model with the following questions (40 minutes):
- What is sustainable tourism from your perspective?
- What are the obstacles in developing inclusive tourism in your local context?
- What stakeholders do you consider relevant to work with to develop resilient and
inclusive tourism? And why?
- What issues are important to address with the stakeholders to develop sustainable
tourism?
• Summing up and planning for future collaborations and activities beyond the SASUF
Forum (20 minutes)

Keywords:Tourism, sustainability, resilience, inclusiveness, communication