Tourism as a Vehicle of Sustainability

In sustainability debate tourism is usually seen as presenting an ecological threat and its impacts are mainly considered to stand in need of eradication or at least minimization. In contrast to this view present paper tries to develop a perspective from which specific form of educational tourism can be perceived as an important contribution to environmental ethics and, consequently, to efforts in achieving sustainability. Paper shows that proper implementation of environmental ethics should be considered as the best way how to achieve sustainability and that in education for this environmental ethics tourism should be used as an important tool because of its ability to provide situational experience needed in this educational process, as is show with an interdisciplinary study, connecting insights gained in the areas of social psychology, consumer behavior, ethics, tourism studies, history of leisure and philosophy. Special attention is paid to contemporary studies in alternative tourism, ecotourism and tourism history research in order to envisage a framework out of which appropriate tourism products could be developed for education in environmental ethics. Findings of this paper are of special interest not only for tourism industry but also for environmental curricula and educational institutions which see achieving sustainability as their primary goal.