Page 28 - IJES Special Issues for AIEC2016

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SMEs and Sustainable Tourism - The Case of an Indian
Himalayan Destination

Ravinder Nath Batta*
Government of Himachal Pradesh, India

International Journal of Abstract. This paper examines the impacts of unplanned growth of tourism
Environment and SMEs on civic infrastructure and the environment in Manali - a major tourist
Sustainability [IJES] destination of Himachal Pradesh. Using an indicator’s framework, the impacts of
ISSN 1927-9566 tourism on the economic, social, and environmental aspects are studied, and it is
Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 18-34 evident that SMEs working in isolation are damaging the environment at the
(2016) destination. While the local community is paying the cost of tourism develop-
ment in the form of degradation of environmental resources, commercialization
of landscape, and congestion, the majority of the economic benefits are flowing
to the expatriate, making tourism at the destination unsustainable. A Community
Benefit Tourism Initiative (CBTI) model is proposed to achieve sustainable
tourism development at the destination through public-private partnership.

Keywords. Indicators Framework; Public-Private participation; Sustainable

*Correspondence: Tourism

rnbatta@hotmail.com

1. Introduction markets. It has made tourism development
demand-driven for tailor made experiences
The phenomenon of tourism is the tangible mostly catered to by the Small and Medium
result of tourists using public resources like Enterprises (SMEs). In view of their relatively
forests, lakes, and mountains and their related low capital requirements, the supply of tourism
recreational activities like camping, trekking, products and services can easily be managed by
and water sports, making the tourism supply a SMEs in nature-based destinations, especially in
complex combination of natural resources, remote areas offering income and employment
recreational sites, and tourism-reliant busi- opportunities. It is often argued (Fleischer and
nesses. Such nature-based destinations allow Pizam, 1997; Smith, 2006) that tourism pro-
access to natural amenities often provided as motion is synonymous with small business
public goods for their non-priced attributes. In promotion, and the industry is heavily charac-
fact, their presence attaches hedonic values to terized by small, family-centered enterprises. A
the tourism units located in nature tourism typical SME such as a bed and breakfast
destinations, differentiating them from similar establishment is perceived as having low entry
structures in downtown areas (Batta, 2003). barriers, employing existing underutilized
Tourism development offers a potentially sound capital, and placing modest demand on the
development option in such destinations in public resources. On the other hand, bigger
view of increased leisure demand, perception of hotel units and tourism facilities require sub-
tourism as a clean industry, and other stantial infrastructural support, such as water,
community related benefits. roads, power, and civic amenities.

With tourism products marketed in various In the context of developing countries, SMEs are
forms (ranging from urban, culture-centric the life blood of the travel and tourism industry
downtown destinations to more exotic forms (Erkkila, 2004) and strongly influence the
like ecotourism, adventure tourism, rural development of a region. Because they often
tourism, and health tourism), tourism consump- regard each other as competitors and not as
tion has changed extensively in recent years,
creating more segmented and specialized