Sustainable tourism value chain analysis as a tool to evaluate tourism's contribution to the sustainable development goals and local Indigenous communities

ABSTRACT

As one of the largest industries, tourism receives substantial attention for planning and development. This attention can contribute to achieving Agenda 2030 and localising the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Over the last decades, sustainable tourism has been promoted as an economic and cultural activity that supports local communities. However, there has been limited research on evaluating sustainable tourism projects from a comprehensive perspective aligned with the SDGs. This paper introduces the sustainable tourism value chain analysis (STVCA), a tool to evaluate how sustainable tourism can contribute to advancing the SDGs at local levels. This study tested the STVCA on one Indigenous ecotourism venture in Mexico, considering economic, socio-cultural, and environmental components. Findings exposed that even though economic benefits were limited, the most significant benefits were non-economic, showing that sustainable tourism has contributed to the well-being of the community by empowering Indigenous people and, in doing so, advancing several SDGs.

KEYWORDS:

• Value chain analysis
• sustainable tourism
• ecotourism
• Indigenous peoples
• local communities
• sustainable development goals

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the Hñahñu people from El Alberto who participated in the interviews and supported the data collection during fieldwork. Special thanks are due to Dr Chris Wilbert for his guidance in the early stages of this paper. This work was partly supported by the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).