Sustainability through the eyes of a small tourism provider

As there are multiple definitions of sustainability, small tourism providers face difficulty around the concept especially those who are on environmentally delicate destinations. Various scholars have noticed the challenges amongst the tourism sector in achieving sustainability measures. The challenges include: environmental deterioration which affects the stability of human survival and the ecosystems in the area. Certain small tourism providers are aware of these environmental challenges and are willing to take action on sustainability measures, however, there is difficulty in taking action. The difficulty comes in as there are conflicts between practices of the local people and there is a limited amount of power and resources. Tourist destinations that are environmentally delicate are those that have ecosystems that are sensitive to disturbance and need to be left in their natural habitat.These destinations pose anthropocentric pressure on the ecosystem causing environmental deterioration. 

Other articles who have written about the perspective on sustainability of small tourism providers only provided a portion of their view. This research by Bertella goes in-depth into the small tourism providers perspective on sustainability. For instance, other articles explored how small tourism providers have had a positive attitude to overcome obstacles, which were connected to international tour operators and power relations with government agencies. Another article mentioned institutions and supportive infrastructures were vital for sustainability practices. The way the environment is treated for tourism proposes or how others control the environment create the worldviews for the small tourism providers. Therefore, gaining a deep understanding around small tourism providers regarding sustainability matters is missing in the research and Bertella fills in the gap through the research in this article, which is outlined in this research news.

Bertella argues that the stories of small tourism providers are able to connect to the worldviews, with regards to their feelings, inner thoughts, emotional viewpoints and engagements around sustainability. In order to achieve sustainable development, it is vital to have storytelling amongst the small tourism providers on sustainability to let the challenges and difficulties be known for improvements to occur. Many other scholars have researched small tourism providers but have left out the sustainability issues. Hence, Bertella researched about sustainability issues and had the following plan: “I considered practitioners' points of view, particularly the story worlds of small providers operating in environmentally fragile destinations and acknowledging their responsibility to act sustainably, and asked: how do small tourism providers use stories to make sense of their world in terms of sustainability?”.

The action taken out by Bertella to answer her research question is through psychology research and management literature to enable reflection on a small tourism provider through storytelling and sense-making. In this way, the audience can view sustainability issues through the eyes of a small tourism provider. In order to achieve this result, Bertella combined the small tourism providers' stories about their locations, life stories, and storytelling from three organisations who are aiming to achieve sustainable tourism practices and the stories from tourists themselves. The data was collected in the form of journaling, document analysis, interviews, and participation. Further, a content analysis was taken out to highlight the practices of the small tourism providers, character roles and the main themes. Bertellea also mentions that, “This study's contribution is a threefold narrative inquiry that captures tourism providers' thoughts and feelings about their self-perceived identities, roles, and practices, which either support or conflict with sustainability, and how they contextualise these identities, roles, and practices in relation to those of other relevant actors.” Since, a content analysis method has been chosen in this research Bertella set up a literature review to analyse the main themes from the small tourism providers perspective regarding sustainability issues.

The literature review elaborates on sustainability connected to the sense-making process including the sustainability behaviors and beliefs and the possible conflicts. 

The themes that were analysed are as follows:

1) Making sense of sustainability

2) Stories and sustainability

The “making sense of sustainability” theme tries to understand how people manage complex situations in their life, especially amongst small tourism providers. Bertella mentions that “the research on sense-making in organisations during changes and crises underpins the way individuals belonging to such organisations approach sustainability-related choices.” Further the psychology literature showed “how people approach and make sense of their sustainability-related choices, besides work-related ones, based on belief/behavior conflicts”.  In result, Bertella summarized that “tourism providers, who consider themselves change agents and responsible group members, can experience belief/behavior conflicts when their practices increase pressure on an already fragile environment. How they face such conflicts, either by changing their beliefs or behaviors or finding justifications that allow them to maintain positive self-images, contributes to tourism providers' worldviews, which, as argued in this paper, can be investigated by referring to their stories”. 

This section in the literature focused on linking sense-making to stories regarding sustainability. Bertella mentions that, “these reflections on sense-making and narratives are relevant to this study especially regarding tourism providers' dilemmas based on belief/behavior conflicts and their roles as change agents. Such dilemmas can be discussed by referring to the concepts of epistemic impasse and spillover from the management literature on change and stories. Both concepts derive from the idea of epistemic as a set of beliefs, knowledge propositions, and practical relations underpinning our ways of thinking, talking, enabling, and legitimising our discourses and practices”. Bertella further states that, “In this literature, life stories are seen as developing through the dimensions of structure (facts, context, and the time sequence of episodes) and motivational/effective themes and reasoning, providing meaning, purpose, and continuity to people's lives. These narratives are not factual but integrate people's reconstructed past and their imagined future, which resonates with the management literature view of stories as creative re descriptions of the world”. To conclude, Bertella mentioned, “based on the view of stories as an important mechanism for sense-making, several studies have used narrative approaches, particularly life stories, to investigate the individual and collective identity constructions of entrepreneurs and other business practitioners in tourism”.

The study had methods and methodology with regards to a constructivist narrative inquiry methodology, which “appreciates multiple truths and realities and relies on mutuality between researchers and researched”. The data was analysed in three sections which are: life stories, stories about destinations and stories for tourists. Further, methodological reflections were also analysed where Bertella’s emotions and relationships were reflected in this study.

The main aim of this study was to find out the worldviews of small tourism providers and their perspective on sustainability. A multi-methods and an enactive methods approach was taken in this study. Bertella’s findings were as follows, “the findings revealed a multi-themed storyworld incorporating conflicting epistemes relating to both weak and strong sustainability. The themes included responsibility/irresponsibility, power imbalance, resistance to change, hypocrisy, concern, disappointment, frustration, sense of guilt, collaboration, passion, moral obligation, agency, and knowledge. The observed conflict mirrored the tension felt by the providers between their sustainability concerns and their practices, which led to an epistemic impasse”. Further, Bertella encountered some differences which were “the inclusion of local providers, such as representatives of possible Indigenous communities, might reveal different stories in which resident communities that had a rather marginal role in this study might play a more prominent role. This could be particularly important for reflections on the interaction between the environmental dimension of sustainability and the economic and sociocultural dimensions.”

Islands or fragile destinations are in remote locations and there are limited amounts of services or skilled labor to assist a deteriorating environment. My view is that since these ecosystems are fragile and there is a vast amount of tourists, measures should be put in place to favor the environment more to the indigenous, local communities and the small tourism providers. Tourists should not leave the environment in a detrimental state as this same environment is a source of life and living for the small tourism providers.