Environmental safety of territories of tourism destinations: Definitions, mechanisms, and challenges

Abstract

The article summarizes and systematizes the mechanisms for ensuring environmental safety of the territories of different tourism destinations in Ukraine. The relevant studies in this area refer to the development of theoretical foundations for ensuring sustainability of the territories of tourism destinations and some publications deal with the assessment of the volume of resource usage (primarily land resources in tourism activities). There are no generalized conclusions regarding the peculiarities of using the available mechanisms for ensuring environmental safety of the territories of tourism destinations. The article analyzes the main environmental problems of the development of tourism infrastructure and tourism industry in general, which makes it necessary to substantiate a set of mechanisms for ensuring the environmental safety of tourism territories. Furthermore, it systematizes the regulatory, economic, control, and voluntary mechanisms, the utilization of which will ensure the environmental safety of tourism destinations. The regulatory mechanisms make it possible to reduce the impacts of tourism activities on various destinations by establishing and regulating the capacity of a territory, as well as by setting the limits and boundaries for the activities of the enterprises providing tourism services, with the help of assessing the impacts of tourism activities on the environment and monitoring the state of the environment and sustainability of territories. The economic mechanisms for ensuring environmental safety of tourism destinations include the following: financial stimulation of tourism entities, financial support of the projects aimed at implementing the eco-projects in tourism, balanced tax policy, and procedures for subsidizing the balanced tourism projects. The main control mechanisms for ensuring environmental safety of tourism destinations consist in the implementation of the actions to control the activities of tourism entities based on their compliance with environmental legislation. The major voluntary mechanisms for ensuring environmental safety of tourism destinations include the following: introduction of environmental management into the general management structure and training of tourists and local residents. Thus, using the set of mechanisms will ensure environmental safety of the territories of tourism destinations

Keywords

• environmental safety
• tourism destinations
• environmental impacts
• recreational load
• mechanisms for ensuring environmental safety