Sustainability analysis of Greece's promotion as a tourism destination

Abstract

Sustainable tourist destination management is nowadays one of the competitive components of the tourism industry. Sustainable marketing advocates new mainstream marketing methods that replace conventional publicizing practices, which lead to sustainable development. It also creates an appeal to the businesses to take into consideration social and ecological limitations of conventional corporate marketing philosophy. Promoting sustainability has been considered as a core theme of destination tourism management for attaining competitive edge. Aim must be the sustainable tourism promotion of the tourism destinations. The purpose of this article is to reveal the degree to which the promotion of Greece as a tourist destination is based on sustainable principles. This is done through the analysis of sustainable promotion of 13 regions of Greece, in 2020. The main objective for the analysis of sustainable promotion is the approaching of sustainability concept through the special characteristics of sustainable promotion. The sustainability analysis will be approached quantitively. Three (3) representative variables has been used: a) the approved funds for tourism promotion, b) the tourist over-night staying and c) the tourism saturation of the area, as determined by the TALC model growth coefficients calculation. The results, which have stem from the analysis, could be a useful tool for sustainable tourism management and marketing in frame of the regional policy. They also could be the basis for the proposed strategies. This will help in the future the planners to make tourism development and promotion more sustainable. © 2021 Hellenic Association of Regional Scientists. All rights reserved.