The Concept of Sustainable Development in Tourism

It is commonly accepted that that landscape management for tourist purposes, according to the idea of sustainable development, is one of the basic priorities of spatial management policy in countries of the European Union. The idea is well established in regulations provided by a number of European documents. These documents emphasize the need for strengthening the regional identity and maintaining the natural and cultural diversity. The leading thesis of the article is the assumption that the tourist industry is one of the main modern sources of human influence on the landscape. This influence mostly brings negative effects like disturbances in the structure and diversity of the landscape, spatial coherence of naturally valuable regions (landscape fragmentation), stability of flow of matter and energy in the landscape, landscape resources, as well as deterioration of social usability and quality of the landscape, unification and decrease in the aesthetic value of the landscape. The article presents basic indicators of the influence of tourism on natural environment, which are natural absorption and tourist capacity. It attempts to evaluate implementation of rules of sustainable development in the tourist industry.