Envisaging sustainable rural development through ‘context-dependent tourism’: case of northern Cyprus

This paper examines conventional forms of tourism-CT and discusses how it can be converted into more diversified forms of tourism-DT by using sustainable rural tourism. Cyprus is used as a case study to show the move away from conventional tourism to a more diversified tourism within a global tourism trends. In order to achieve the utilisation of existing and emerging tourism capacities, a categorisation of tourism approaches is evaluated to assess the extent of sustaining tourism diversification. The paper identifies and discusses the formation and deformation processes of tourism by contextualising and clarifying tourism policies and planning processes at macro- and micro-levels, based on literature analysis and national surveys, including statistics, questionnaires and workshops. This research provides an overall framework in asserting values of different tourism forms to enable capacity utilisation, which refers to the collaborative existence of different forms of tourism and their interaction between each other, in order to balance the impact in achieving a context-based sustainable tourism development. The findings of the research provide groundwork for long-term tourism management on developing strategies, policies on future sustainable development forecasting.