Integrating sustainable tourism and marketing management: can National Parks provide the framework for strategic change?

This paper argues that strategic marketing management can play an important role in the development of sustainable tourism principles within National Parks. Sustainable tourism marketing - incorporating social, economic and environmental perspectives is discussed. The research presented here focused on two key themes: the integration and co-ordination of tourism activity (delivered by different organizations), and use of strategic marketing for sustainable tourism initiatives (marketing issues, interpretation, branding, communication messages). It reports on two case studies, one of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) soon to be designated as a National Park and the other of an already well-established National Park to illustrate the key issues involved in achieving strategic change in terms of a sustainable marketing ethos within such an environment. A principal finding is that the National Park designation appears to provide a strategic framework for sustainable tourism. However, the designation has a limited impact in terms of actual implementation of policies and guidelines and in persuading all relevant tourist service providers to participate. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.