Sustainable Tourism Rapid Indicators for Less-developed Islands: an Economic Perspective

Research on the aspects of tourism and sustainability is growing with a concern that sustainable tourism principles are difficult to implement in developing countries. Within this context, the paper has engaged in the identification, selection and evaluation of sustainability indicators for rapid assessment of tourism development in one of the remotest and most sensitive destinations in the world, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India (ANI). It reviews the indicator sets and research on indicator development frameworks and examines the identification and assessment of rapid economic indicators for the ANI. The ANI indicator development strategy considered indicators that are developed and assessed mainly for developed countries and evaluated a feasible bottom-up approach, which is mainly based on local knowledge for sustainable tourism initiatives in less-developed islands. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.