Tourism: New destination of global business environment

In the last few decades, the tourism industry has been transformed into a global business. On one hand, tourism has become a mass service causing considerable changes in the world economy, but on the other hand this massive, often uncoordinated industrial boom may have caused social, economic and ecological damages. Based on WTO statistics, tourism, as a part of a tertiary economic sector, is a leading industry in the European Union as well. European Commission for Business and Industry statistics prove that tourism accounts for more than 5% of GDP in the EU-27. (EUROSTAT, 2012) Moreover tourism accounts for 11% of the worlds´ GDP. Yet, this strong economic influence also has had negative results, which each destination should endeavour to reduce or eliminate. In response, the governmental bodies of some states have strategically started to embrace sustainability rules and indicators to coordinate and manage their destination. Such rules and indicators designed for monitoring and evaluating the tourism industry are helping to increase the value of destinations and to preserve them for future generations. Building on the literature review, the problem of sustainability has strategically begun to be solved in the Czech Republic, too. However most of the Czech research does not provide the tourism businesses with a manner of concrete implementing sustainability indicators into real conditions. This paper argues for the necessity of economic sustainability within the tourism industry and outlines a proposal for sustainability indicator development that will comprise the core of future research soon to be implemented in a specific facility classified according to CZ NACE in a defined region of the Czech Republic.

Key words: Knowledge Intensive Activities, economic sustainability, tourism, indicator

JEL: L83, Q56