SAID SHEHATA

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Tourism development is an opportunity but is also a threat if not managed appropriately. In the emerging tourism destinations, it is essential that tourism sustainable development initiatives be prepared to prevent the deterioration of their resources and guarantee their continued viability in the future. The achievement of tourism sustainable development will only be secured if there is openness for a "cultural change" in shifting the region’s patterns of development. Integrated planning, local communities, and monitoring are key players in this process of change. The WTO’s different definitions for sustainable tourism concentrate on the satisfaction of the tourists while protecting the tourism destination resources including environment, cultural biodiversity, and heritage. This approach presents us with a type of a tourist-centric development. While sustainable development presenting us with a community-centric approach where the benefits of the development are directed to the local communities of the development locations. Recently, debates have shifted toward more global thinking and local action where emphasising is set about tourism’s relationships with host communities within the frame of sustainable tourism development process. This paper, however, argues the ability of sustainable tourism development to bring to the fore the maximum satisfaction to the tourist (tourism-centric ST), while saving the ability to direct the development to the benefits of the local communities (community-centric SD).
Accordingly, the paper is organized in two parts, the first, conducts a profound definitions and analysis for the meaning and components of ST and SD process aiming to prove the ability of STD to maintain the balance between the concepts in the most economical, environmental and socio-cultural sustainable manner. Case studies of success efforts of coastal areas management and sustainability were demonstrated in the second part to identify how can STD contribute to link the development of the coastal areas to their hinterland thus providing a ST product within a comprehensive SD process of the development areas combining its coastal to its hinterland. The paper is concluded with a proposed framework that aims to positively contribute to the objective of implementing sustainable tourism development in coastal areas with reference to Egypt.

In 1991 Elizabeth Boo initiated the notion of Eco-tourism into the global context, since then there is an on going debate around the efficiency of the term. Some argued the term to be no more than a myth or a rhetoric speech about sustaining our ‘ego’. Others sees the term as a panacea from heaven presenting the tourism industry with a sensitive environmental approach. The paper argues ‘eco-tourism’ to be a highly rated sustainable form of tourism that is only applicable to specific locations of high scenic environmental, social and culture values and with specific management capabilities . Consequently, the paper aims to investigate the rhetoric discourse of 'eco-tourism' and how can it contribute to the tourism developments within the Egyptian context. The research methodology is to conduct a profound study aiming to analyse and study the philosophy of the ecotourism concept, defining its features and principles. Studying the link between the concept of 'ecotourism' and that of 'sustainable tourism', extending the debate to the reality of ecotourism development process within the realm of developing countries; aiming to achieve an objective answer to the question of; whether to 'ecowise' or to 'sustainwise'?