The Institute of Development Studies at Massey University will host the 1st Tourism and the SDGs conference (Tourism4SDGs19) from 24-25 January 2019 at our Albany campus, Auckland, New Zealand.

The Sustainable Development Goals, ratified at the United Nations in 2015 and set to guide global development through to 2030, urge governments, industry and communities alike to engage in direct efforts to work in more socially, economically and environmentally sustainable ways. As one of the world’s largest industries, tourism should address sustainability issues head on. There is certainly a great deal of rhetoric on the virtues and promise of tourism as a tool for sustainable development, and there have been positive steps towards sustainability by many companies, governments and others. However, it is also claimed that the tourism industry has oversold its sustainable potential:  “Tourism hides its unsustainability behind a mask that is all the more beguiling because it appears so sustainable. We too easily imagine that tourism as the embodiment of sustainability, when in reality it may represent unrealized hopes and desires for the world we want to live in, the environments we want to inhabit, and economy we want to participate in” (Hollenhorst et al. 2014: 306).

This conference on Tourism and the SDGs offers the opportunity for a wide range of scholars and tourism stakeholders to discuss and debate both (i) challenges to tourism contributing to the SDGs, and (ii) ways in which tourism can deliver on its potential to be more inclusive, equitable and sustainable, in line with the values embedded in the Global Goals.