Key elements of success and barriers in community based tourism AbstractCommunity based tourism (CBT) has often been cited as an alternative to mass tourism and an approach for tourism to become more sustainable. If developed well, CBT can become a poverty alleviation mechanism and a way to access improvements in quality of life, providing empowerment and greater economic benefit to individuals in local communities. Despite the plethora of literature on CBT and evaluation of models, there is little analysis of the facilitators and barriers to achieving it. Through the use of case studies in both academic and grey literature, this paper serves as an instructive review of the CBT literature to synthesise the key elements of success and the challenges.

Highlights Implications of the entrepreneurial orientation on short term financial return and long term business growth. Association between dynamic environment and entrepreneurial orientation. Adoption of business and social networking ties in the hospitality industry. Prompting managers' decisions to develop entrepreneurial orientation in creating value for hospitality firms. Gaining short term financial expansion by adopting various technological resources through possible effect on operational processes and strategy development.

Purpose – The aim of this research is to foreground information and communication technology (ICT) as an innovative approach for sustainable tourism (ST) development of destinations. ICT is the technology required for information processing which facilitates data processing, information sharing, communication, searching and selection. This paper concentrates on the Abernathy and Clark model and its usefulness in applying ICT as innovative in managing ST. Design/methodology/approach – An online survey was administered to destination managers and to eTourism experts. Destination managers were selected as they were identified as the person responsible for the overall management of a Destination Management Organisation. eTourism experts were identified as someone who possesses special expertise, knowledge and skills on ICT applications to tourism and offered expertise on which ranged from such areas as electronic distribution, recommender systems, user-generated content, online communities, mobile technology, technology acceptance, tourism networks and Web 2.0. This was followed by semi-structured interviews. Findings – These ICT tools were found to be innovative for information management and distribution for critical decision-making. Innovation was fostered through the use of ICT for ST by leading to a better understanding of the tourism product, monitoring, measuring and evaluating, forecasting trends, developing partnerships and engaging and supporting stakeholder relationships. ICT would provide novel ways of approaching marketing, energy monitoring, waste management, and communication for destinations. Originality/value – This research is important in demonstrating the value that technology can have to ST and further develops the work on tourism innovation theory.

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This paper introduces information and communication technologies as an innovative approach to managing sustainable tourism development from a destination management perspective. Specific attention is focused on the how destination managers utilise the various forms of technology in addressing both the positive and negative impacts of tourism. Building on Hjalager's (1997) analytical typology for sustainable tourism innovation, this research aims to advance tourism innovation research and demonstrate new uses of technology and the wider applications for sustainable tourism. Using a thorough literature review and primary research with destination managers, a collection of technology based tools and their uses were examined for sustainable tourism development and how these tools can foster destination innovativeness. KeywordsICT, information and communication technology, sustainable tourism, eTourism, innovation, destination management IntroductionTourism's phenomenal, sustained growth rate makes it highly attractive as a means of economic development (Mihalic et al. 2012) and like most commercial activities, tourism has produced both beneficial and detrimental environmental and socio-cultural impacts, some of which may be irreversible. Balancing economic growth with protection of the environment is a challenge, which today faces most tourism professionals and the tourism industry is focusing on sustainable tourism development (ST) as a mechanism to try to achieve the aims of economic development whilst protecting, preserving and enhancing the environment (Swarbrooke 1999).Destinations are inevitably the areas where the main tourism impacts occur are felt most powerfully (Wall and Mathieson 2006) and there has been a general and growing concern on how destinations can develop in a sustainable manner (Dodds 2012). A plethora of ideas, techniques and philosophies have been developed to both explore and explain ST (Swarbrooke 1999). Some examples of these approaches include indicators, monitoring, eco-labelling, codes of conduct and alternative forms of tourism. However, many of these approaches have been documented as having a "lack of quality, technical content, reliability, maturity, equity and effectiveness" (Van Der Duim and Van Marwijk 2006: 449). Despite more than 40 years of tourism research focusing on ST and its implementation (Mihalic et al. 2012), the case is still considered theoretically weak (Moscardo 2008; Sharpley 2010). Pigram's (1990) and Liu's (2003) arguments that ST research has to progress beyond the formulation and discussion of the principles and assumptions to effective solutions is still at the crux of the debate today. Added to this, tourism businesses find it difficult to understand and apply sustainability practices (Mihalic et al. 2012) whilst Sharpley (2010) debates that the notion of sustainable tourism is indeed a myth which prevents ST from becoming a practical reality. Therefore challenges still exist to find viable ways of translating ST into practical actions for the tou...