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 Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research
Volume 20, Number 1, pp. xx-xx, 2009
Copyright © 2009 anatolia
Printed in Turkey. All rights reserved
1303-2917/09 $20.00 + 0.00

Degrowing Tourism: Décroissance,

Sustainable Consumption and
Steady-State Tourism
C. MICHAEL HALL1 ,
1
Department of Management, College of Business & Economics, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800,
Christchurch, New Zealand.
E-mail: michael.hall@canterbury.ac.nz

A R T I CL E I N F O
Article history:
Submi�ed : 09 March 2009
Resubmi�ed : 19 March 2009
Accepted : 22 March 2009
Key words:
Degrowth, décroissance
Economism
Steady-state tourism
Sustainable consumption
Sustainable tourism
Slow tourism.
A B S T R A C T
Tourism studies have a tradition of seeking alternative pathways to economic
development that minimise negative externalities for destinations. However,
despite discourses that focus on sustainability and conservation tourism’s con-
tribution to global environmental change have continued to increase. Instead,
the contribution of tourism to sustainable development should be understood
in the context of degrowth processes that offer an alternative discourse to
the economism paradigm that reifies economic growth in terms of GDP.
A paradigm supported by institutions such as the UNWTO. A steady state
understanding of sustainability is postulated that stresses both efficiency and
sufficiency in terms of the natural capital and ecological resources on which
economic throughput is based. Steady state tourism is therefore defined as a
tourism system that encourages qualitative development but not aggregate
quantitative growth that unsustainably reduces natural capital.

INTRODUCTION
There has long been an interest in tourism studies with respect to finding ‘alter-
natives’ to the perceived environmental, social and economic ills of conventional
mass tourism. In academic terms these potentially first came to the forefront
of tourism studies in the late 1970s although there is a much longer history of
concern with inappropriate or unwanted tourism growth and the changes it
can bring to destinations dating back to the beginning of industrial tourism
and arguably even longer. Such concerns over the effects of tourism develop-
ment and resultant change, received further impetus with the discovery of
‘sustainability’ by students of tourism in the late 1980s, with sustainable tour-
ism having developed into a significant sub-field of tourism studies complete
with its own journals, key books, readings and dedicated meetings.

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 Degrowing Tourism: Décroissance, Sustainable Consumption and Steady-State Tourism

The interest in finding alternatives to ‘mainstream’ or ‘inappropriate’ forms

of tourism development is directly related to academic and policy discourses,
and real world events that occur outside of the realm of tourism. For example,
de Kadt’s (1979) influential work on tourism in the less developed countries
needs to be understood in the context of a far wider debate that was occurring
over development and modernisation in the 1970s – as well as the backdrop
of the Cold War and competing economic and political ideologies. Renewed
impetus for the debate over the role of tourism in economic development was
given by the massive interest in sustainable development generated by the
WCED (Bruntland) report (1987). However, interest in sustainable tourism
from the early 1990s on has been accompanied by related concerns with ‘al-
ternative’, ‘community’ and, more recently, ‘pro poor’ tourism (Hall and Lew
2009). The community and social dimension in much of the tourism devel-
opment discourse has also run in conjunction with environmental concerns
that have been examined in the context of impact assessment, ‘ecotourism’,
‘nature-based tourism’ and tourism and environmental change, especially cli-
mate change (Gössling and Hall 2006).

THE GLOBAL IMPACT OF TOURISM

The concern in the academic tourism community, if not to some in the policy
community, with the effects of tourism and the desire to find alternatives rais-
es fundamental questions about tourism development. The Brundtland defi-
nition, that ‘sustainable development is development that meets the needs of
the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs’ (WCED 1987: 49), has come to feature in many a tourism
textbook and student essay, even though tourism was hardly mentioned in
the report at all (Hall 2008). Yet, despite the ongoing series of statements of
concern from organizations such as the UNWTO and the WTTC the funda-
mental reality is that in terms of resource use, land use change, biodiversity
loss, and pollution, tourism’s negative effects are ge�ing worse not be�er.
Several authors have tried to identify the global dimensions of tourism re-
lated environmental change (e.g. Gössling 2002; Gössling and Hall 2006) with
Gössling’s (2002) study providing a benchmark for later estimates (Hall and
Lew 2009). Table 1 indicates various dimensions of tourism and global and
environmental change estimated for 2001 and 2007.
In great part the environmental effects of tourism are a product of the sheer
volume of tourist trips. Although there is no internationally consistent and
comprehensive set of data for domestic tourism the UNWTO estimated that
in 2005 5 billion arrivals were by same-day visitors (4 billion domestic and
1 billion international) and 4.8 billion from arrivals of tourists staying over-
night (4 billion domestic and 800 million international). Taking into account
that an international trip can generate arrivals in more than one destination
country, the number of trips is regarded as somewhat lower than the number
of arrivals. Therefore for 2005 the global number of international tourist trips
(i.e., trips by overnight visitors) was estimated at 750 million corresponding

2 n Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research

 C. Michael Hall

to 16% of the total number of tourist trips, with domestic trips representing
84% or 4 billion tourist trips (Sco� et al. 2008). The percentage estimates can
therefore be used to provide a rough calculation of the total amount of tourist
trips for other years. Table 1 indicates that the amount of tourist trips is in-
creasing not only in absolute terms but, when compared to growth in world
population, also in relative terms (also see Hall 2005a who similarly indicated
that international tourism mobility was increasing faster than population
growth). Such growth is significant not only in terms of the economic dimen-
sions of tourism but also in the growth of emissions with the rate of growth
outstripping improvements in energy efficiency and emissions reduction per
tourist (Gössling et al. 2009).
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most significant greenhouse gas (GHG), ac-
counting for 77% of global anthropogenic global warming (Stern 2006). CO2
emissions from tourism have grown to a estimated level of about 5.0% of all
anthropogenic emissions of CO2 in 2005, with most of this (40%) from avia-
tion. Globally, an average tourist trip lasts 4.15 days (average length for all
international and domestic tourist trips) and generates average emissions of
0.25 tonnes of CO2 per traveller (Sco� et al. 2008). The vast majority of trips
produce low emissions, but it is the small proportion of long-haul trips that
are highly emission-intense. Long haul travel between the five world regions
the UNWTO use for statistical aggregation purposes (Africa, Americas, Asia-
Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East) accounts for only 2.7% of all tourist
trips, but contributes 17% of global tourist emissions (UNWTO and UNEP
2008).
Trips by coach (bus) and rail account for 34% of all trips worldwide, but
comprise only 13% of global CO2 emissions (including emissions from ac-
commodation and activities). Although air-based trips comprise only 17% of
all tourist trips, they cause about 40% of all tourism-related CO2 emissions,
and 54-75% of radiative forcing (the change in the balance between radiation
coming into the atmosphere and radiation going out). While the average trip
generates 0.25 tonnes of CO2, long haul trips and luxury cruises can generate
up to 9 t CO2 per person per trip (35 times the emissions caused by an average
trip) (Sco� et al. 2008). Even ‘ecotourism’ holidays that are supposedly envi-
ronmentally friendly, such as dive holidays, will cause high emissions in the
range of 1.2 to 6.8 t CO2 due to emission from air, automobile and boat travel
(Gössling et al. 2007). The impact of aviation based long-haul travel on the
environment becomes even more significant when it is recognised that such
trips can generate higher per person emissions in a single holiday than the an-
nual per capita emissions of the average world citizen (4.3 t CO2), or even the
higher average of an EU citizen (9 t CO2) (Peeters et al. 2007).
Travel between and within the more economically developed regions of the
world (Europe plus parts of the Americas and the Asia-Pacific) is the most
significant contribution to emissions, comprising 67% of international trips
worldwide and 50% of all passenger kilometres (pkm) travelled globally.
In contrast, Africa is the least important destination for travellers from the

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 Degrowing Tourism: Décroissance, Sustainable Consumption and Steady-State Tourism

Table 1. Tourism’s Contribution to Global Environmental Change

Dimension 2001 estimates 2007 estimates

Number of international tourist arrivals 682 million1 898 million1

Number of domestic tourist arrivals 3,580.5 million2 4,714.5 million2

Total number of tourist arrivals 4,262.5 million2 5,612.5 million2

Change of land cover – alteration
of biologically productive lands 0.5% contribution3 0.66% contribution4

Energy consumption 14,080 PJ3 18,585.6 PJ4

Emissions 1400 Mt of CO2-e3 1848 Mt of CO2-e4 (1461.6

Mt of CO2)5

Biotic exchange Difficult to assess3 Difficult to assess, however rate

of exchange is increasing4

Extinction of wild species Difficult to assess3 Difficult to assess, particularly

because of time between initial
tourism effects and extinction events.

Health Difficult to assess3 Difficult to assess in host

populations, but sickness in
tourists assessed at
50% by WHO 4

World Population6 6,169.8 million 6,632.2 million

Total number of tourist arrivals

as % of world population 69.1% 84.6%

Number of international tourist

arrivals as % of world population 11.1% 13.5%

1. UNWTO figures; 2. Hall and Lew (2009) estimates based on UNWTO data; 3. Gössling (2002)
estimate; 4. Hall and Lew (2009) extrapolation based on Gössling’s estimates; 5. UNWTO, UNEP
and WMO (2007) estimate for 2005. 6 Mid-year world population estimate by US Census Bureau
International Data Base (h�p://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpop.html)

developed countries, receiving just 2.2% of all trips from Europe and the
Americas (3.3% of CO2 emissions from tourism). Long haul (interregional)
tourism from Europe represents 18% of all international trips, and 49% of all
CO2 emissions from travel. Long haul travel within and between the world’s
most industrialized countries, therefore, causes most of tourism’s greenhouse
gas emissions (UNWTO and UNEP 2008), although it is the least developed
countries that will have the greatest problems in adapting to the effects of
climate change. Because of such issues there is substantial debate about how
international transport emissions can and should be incorporated into climate
change mitigation and adaptation schemes, who should pay, and how should
future transport infrastructure be developed (Gössling et al. 2009).
The impacts of tourism at a global scale affects not only the atmosphere but
also land use. Gössling (2002) calculated that globally, leisure-related land
use might amount to 515,000 km2 (200,000 mi2), representing 0.34% of the
terrestrial surface of the Earth and 0.5% of its biologically productive area.
Less than 1 percent of leisure-induced land alteration was due to accommo-

4 n Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research

 C. Michael Hall

dation, with traffic infrastructure accounting for 97% of change. Leisure-in-

duced land alterations, however, are often concentrated in ecologically sensi-
tive or significant environments. Tourism urbanization tends to be focused in
high value amenity environments and is closely associated with other forms
of amenity-related urbanization, such as retirement and lifestyle migration,
particularly in coastal areas (Hall 2006a). Furthermore, it should also be
stressed that Gössling’s calculations are extremely conservative, including
only commercial accommodation and not second homes or other secondary
dimensions of tourism-related urbanisation in destination and resort areas
(Hall and Lew 2009).
Another significant dimension of global environmental change that is re-
lated to increased tourism mobility is the unplanned movement of biota and
disease from one location to another via transport and people. Humans are
significant vectors for disease, as well as being carriers of pests, which may
also host diseases that affect humans, plants and animals. ‘In terms of its rate
and geographical extent, its potential for synergistic disruption and the scope
of its evolutionary consequences, the current mass invasion event [of biota]
is without precedent and should be regarded as a unique form of global
change’ (Ricciardi 2007: 335). The extent of global biotic exchange is such that
alien invasions are included as ‘Threats to Biodiversity’ in the Convention on
Biological Diversity’s (CBD) framework (McGeoch et al. 2006). Even though
biosecurity measures are in place in many airports prohibited items still get
through. For example, in Australia it has been estimated that the leakage rates
for airline passengers arriving in Australia, which measures the percentage of
all items that have crossed the border but which still contain or possess seiz-
able material, has been relatively stable since 1998 at between 3 and 4 percent
(Hall 2005b). The impacts of the introduction of exotic species can be substan-
tial. Pimental et al. (2001) examined the economic and environmental threats
from alien plant, animal and microbe invasions in the US, UK, Australia,
South Africa, India, and Brazil, and estimated that over 120,000 non-native
species had invaded the six countries and are causing more than US$314 bil-
lion per year in damages.
In the light of global health scares such as SARS increasing a�ention is also
given to the role of international travel as a channel for the spread of infec-
tious disease, what Morse (1993) described as viral traffic. According to Hall
(2005a) the increase in air travel has also increased the potential for diseases to
spread for two reasons: first, the increased speed of travel means that people
can travel and pass through airports before disease symptoms become evi-
dent; and, second, the increased size of modern aircraft. For example, draw-
ing on the travel medicine literature, Hall (2005a) postulated a hypothetical
situation in which the chance of one person in the travelling population hav-
ing a communicable disease in the infectious stage was 1 in 10,000. With a
200-passenger aircraft, the probability of having an infected passenger aboard
(x) is 0.02 (200/10,000 = 0.02) and the number of potential contacts (y) is 199.
If homogenous mixing is assumed, this means a combined risk factor (xy) of

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 Degrowing Tourism: Décroissance, Sustainable Consumption and Steady-State Tourism

3.98 (a 3.98% chance of being exposed to n infectious disease). If the aircraft

size is doubled to 400 passengers, then the corresponding figures are x = 0.04,
y = 399, and xy = 15.96. In the case of the double-decker Airbus A380 that came
into service in 2007, the passenger configuration ranges from 550 to almost
800 seats if placed into an all economy class configuration. If we assume a
600 seat aircraft, then the corresponding figures are x = 0.06, y = 599, and xy =
35.94. In other words, tripling the number of seats available increases the risk
factor nine-fold, from a 4% to a 36% chance of being exposed to an infectious
communicable disease.
Potentially the one positive contribution of tourism to the global environ-
ment has been the use of tourism as a justification for the establishment of na-
tional parks and protected areas, what can be referred to as the global conser-
vation estate (Hall and Lew 2009). The global conservation estate has grown
enormously since the first United Nations List of Protected Areas was published
in 1962 with just over 1000 protected areas. In 1997 there were over 12,754
sites, and 102,102 sites covering 18.8 million km2 (7.25 million mi2) by 2003, a
figure equivalent to 12.6% of the Earth’s land surface (Chape et al. 2003: 21).
Of the total area protected, it is estimated that 17.1 million km2 (6.6 million
mi2) constitute terrestrial protected areas, or 11.5% of the global land surface.
However, some biomes, such as lake systems and temperate grasslands, are
poorly represented, while marine areas are significantly under-represented
(Frost and Hall 2009).
The bo�om line of this litany of environmental change is that tourism can-
not be regarded as an ‘environmentally friendly’ industry and may even
be behind a number of other industries with respect to the overall level of
environmental activity and the provision of environmentally sound alterna-
tives (Martens and Spaargaren 2005). Figure 1 provides a representation of
the relative level of environmental activities and the provision and adoption
of environmentally sound alternatives for different consumption activities
in developed countries (Hall and Lew 2009). Tourism is therefore like any
other form of development, it has its costs and benefits (Gössling et al. 2009).
However, tourism often seems to regard itself as different and continues to
be portrayed as a positive contributor to the environment via ecotourism and
pro-poor tourism in some destinations while seemingly ignoring the global
environmental changes it contributes too. Almost any first year university
student understands the notion of a tourism system whereby tourism influ-
ences not only the destination but also the tourism generating area and the
transit region(s) in which the tourist travels to and from the destination (Hall
2008). Yet these extra-destination impacts often seem to be glossed over by
industry and government actors in seeking to account for tourism’s environ-
mental affects. Ironically, when it comes to assessing tourism’s economic im-
pacts, such as through Tourism Satellite Account modelling, there seems to
have been great enthusiasm in demonstrating the extent of its economic reach
without a similar research programme that matches it to its considerable en-
vironmental effects.

6 n Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research

 Figure 1. The Relative Level of Environmental Activities and the Provision and Adoption of
Environmentally Sound Alternatives for Different Consumption
C. Michael Hall Domains in Developed
Countries (Hall 2007)

Level of
environmental
activity Food
Housing
(solar hot
water)

Mobility
(commuting) Housing
Clothing (insulation)
Mobility Housing
(tourism) (off-grid)
Leisure

Phase 1: Phase 2: Phase 3: Phase 4:

Acknowledgement / Production / High level of Standardisation
recognition of need provision of adoption
alternatives

Stages in the greening of an industry via the

provision and adoption of environmentally sound
consumption alternatives

Figure 1. The Relative Level of Environmental Activities and the Provision and Adoption of En-
vironmentally Sound Alternatives for Different Consumption Domains in Developed Countries
(Hall 2007)

Because of tourism’s impacts on environmental quality, tourism is subject

to something akin to Hardin’s (1968) ‘tragedy of the commons’, whereby free
access and unrestricted demand for a finite natural resource ultimately struc-
turally dooms the resource through over-exploitation. The ‘solution’ has been
to manage the problems of the commons via various means, such as regula-
tion, applying the polluter pays principle, and even corporatisation or priva-
tisation of what was previously an unregulated public resource. In the case
of some of the commons properties, such as the air or the sea, regulation and
polluter pays policies are often substantially resisted by the tourism industry.
The industry typically refers to the wider ‘public good’ that their economic
activity generates as a justification to minimize regulations. Of course, such
arguments are nonsense, as all businesses contributes to a common economic
good via their purchasing and employment capacities, and yet common pub-
lic goods (such as air and roads) still need to be managed to avoid degrada-
tion from overuse (Hall and Page 2006).
There are very few tourists who deliberately aim to abuse the destination
they are visiting and the social and environmental resources they are consum-
ing. Many visitors are even seeking to make environmentally and socially
friendly tourism purchasing decisions. However, as in the tragedy of the
commons, individual travellers generally do not believe that their consump-
tion is going to lead to negative impacts. In fact, most will likely believe being
a tourist is good for a destination because of the employment it must bring.
Nevertheless, it is the totality of all the individual tourist consumption and
production decisions that are causing economic, social and environmental
change (Hall and Lew 2009).
Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions to these challenges, as prevent-
ing people from travelling will only create political problems, while all that

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 Degrowing Tourism: Décroissance, Sustainable Consumption and Steady-State Tourism

consumption (and subsequent pollution) may just be shifted elsewhere. In-

stead, solutions lie in the realm of the sub-title of Hardin’s famous essay: ‘it
requires a fundamental extension in morality’. The issue is not just one for
tourism, significant as it is, but is grounded with respect to morality in terms
of self-reflexive, conscious considerations of what and why we consume, as
well as how cooperation can be encouraged for mutual benefit (Ostrom et al.
1999). If we accept the moral principle derived from Kant’s ([1785] 1996) Cat-
egorical Imperative – act in the way you would be willing for it to become a
general law that everyone else should act in the same situation – then proper
levels of consumption would mean a lifestyle, including tourism and rec-
reation, that everyone can enjoy and which the global environment can cope
with without undesirable change (see White 2008). However, this is the very
problem with much of contemporary international travel: there is not enough
world for everyone to be the average North American or European long-haul
tourist. Undoubtedly, some steps have been taken with respect to be�er un-
derstanding how we can do this, but globally tourism has neither become a
‘force for peace’ nor fulfilled the initial hope of sustainable tourism and eco-
tourism. Instead, global tourism presents as much ‘greenwashing’ (Medina
2005) as what do many of the other multinational industries that are promot-
ing themselves as becoming more energy efficient and purveyors of green
solutions, such as the coal, oil and nuclear industries, multinational car firms,
and aircraft manufacturers. Indeed, the energy and transport industries pro-
vide a mutually reinforcing role with the development of medium and long-
distance tourism. Yet, if the contribution of tourism to these sectors is to be
acknowledged as part of the economic benefits of tourism then so should the
environmental impacts.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
If tourism is to make a genuine contribution to sustainability then it becomes
vital that there is greater public acknowledgement by industry and govern-
ment of what the positive and negative impacts of tourism are, and thereby
to see tourism as part of the larger socio-economic and bio-physical system
(Hall and Lew 2009). To modify Goodland and Daly (1996), sustainable tour-
ism development is tourism development without growth in throughput of
ma�er and energy beyond regenerative and absorptive capacities. Although
often referred to as a service industry, tourism’s impacts are not intangible.
In order to reduce its environmental footprint, tourism needs to become part
of a circular economy rather than a linear one, so that inputs of virgin raw
material and energy and outputs in the form of emissions and waste requir-
ing disposal are reduced (Hall 2008). Such a change is often categorised as
sustainable consumption.
Within tourism there are two main approaches to encouraging this ap-
proach (Figure 2). First is the efficiency approach, which seeks to reduce the
rate of consumption by using materials more productively. Eco-efficiency
stresses the technological link between value creation in economic activities

8 n Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research

 1
Figure 2. Towards Sustainable Tourism Consumption (Hall 2007)

Same or increased personal travel demand. ‘Business as usual’. No fundamental change in destination choice or consumption
choices: ‘Green Growth’ Continued run down of natural capital if only policy approach

PRODUCER
BEHAVIOUR

PRODUCTION ECO-EFFICIENCY
Efficiency More productive use of materials
and energy.

DRIVERS EXTERNAL INTERNAL

FOR Regulation; Value change; Increased Product Life Spans SUSTAINABLE
CHANGE Cost of energy; Ethical & social Changed Consumer Behaviour CONSUMPTION
Competition responsibilities
C. Michael Hall

SLOW CONSUMPTION Reduction in personal

Sufficiency Changed consumption patterns demand. Fundamental
change in demand to
leading to reduced throughput of
emphasise ‘local’
CONSUMPTION products and services and less destinations and
CONSUMER energy. reduce resource
BEHAVIOUR consumption and
distance travelled:
‘Reorientation’.
Recessionary in
implementation if used
in isolation from other
measures.

Volume 20 = Number 1 = Summer 2009 =

9
 Degrowing Tourism: Décroissance, Sustainable Consumption and Steady-State Tourism

and environmental quality. This approach places more focus on recycling,

using energy more efficiently, eco-innovation, and reducing emissions, but
otherwise operating in a ‘business as usual’ manner. Examples of this include
efforts to produce more fuel efficient aircraft.
The second approach may be referred to as ‘slow consumption’, and includes
consumer activism as well as industry and public policy initiatives. These in-
clude (Hall 2007):
• the development of environmental standards at the regional, national and
international scales, e.g. such as the Nordic Swan label (e.g. Bohdanowicz
2009) (also utilised under the efficiency approach);
• relocalisation schemes such as farmers markets and ‘local diets’ that rein-
force the potential economic, social and environmental benefits of purchas-
ing, consuming and producing locally (e.g. Hall and Sharples 2008);
• ethical consumption, through ethical and responsible tourism (e.g. Good-
win and Francis 2003); and
• the so-called ‘new politics of consumption’ such as anti-consumerism and
culture jamming (e.g. White 2008).

The slow consumption approach is closely related to the concept of ‘décr-

oissance’ or ‘degrowth’ that recently entered the lexicon of green econom-
ics. Degrowth is not a theory of contraction equivalent to theories of growth,
instead it is a term created by radical critics of growth theory that seeks to
provide an alternative to the dominant doctrines of ‘economism’ in which
growth is the ultimate good by positing the development of a non-growth
form of economics bounded by the sustainable limits of humankind’s eco-
logical footprint on the planet’s natural resources as part of a post-develop-
ment society (Latouche 2004). Degrowth is therefore not so much connected
to downsizing per se but to the notion of ‘right-sizing and the creation of a
steady state economy. Components of which include:
• Reducing the global ecological footprint (including the carbon footprint) to
a sustainable level
• In countries where the per capita footprint is greater than the sustainable
global level, reducing to this level within a reasonable timeframe.
• Increasing consumption by those in severe poverty as quickly as possible,
in a sustainable way, to a level adequate for a decent life, following locally
determined poverty-reduction paths rather than externally imposed devel-
opment policies.
• Increasing economic activity in some cases; but redistribution of income
and wealth both within and between countries as a more essential part of
poverty reduction (Flipo and Schneider 2008).
The conference declaration of the first international conference on economic
degrowth held in 2008 stated that the process of degrowth should be charac-
terised by

10 n Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research

 C. Michael Hall

• an emphasis on quality of life rather than quantity of consumption;

• the fulfilment of basic human needs for all;
• societal change based on a range of diverse individual and collective ac-
tions and policies;
• substantially reduced dependence on economic activity, and an increase in
free time, unremunerated activity, conviviality, sense of community, and
individual and collective health;
• encouragement of self-reflection, balance, creativity, flexibility, diversity,
good citizenship, generosity, and non-materialism;
• observation of the principles of equity, participatory democracy, respect
for human rights, and respect for cultural differences (Flipo and Schneider
2008: 318).

Tourism has not been a focal point of degrowth research (see Bourdeau
and Berthelot 2008 for an exception). However, tourism research has engaged
with elements of the concept. This includes not only the broader discourse
of developing a just and materially responsible society, in which tourism is
understood within the context of sustainable development (Hall and Brown
2006), but also the relationship between tourism and other forms of alterna-
tive development. Significant examples of the la�er include Slow Food (e.g.
Hall and Sharples 2008), and Fair Trade (e.g. Clevedon and Kalisch 2000),
with the slow food movement in particular, as the name implies, being re-
garded as an exemplar of slow consumption.
The slow consumption ‘sufficiency’ approach to sustainability and the produc-
tion oriented ‘efficiency’ approach mirror broader alternatives with respect
to sustainable development. However, both are ultimately required in the
transformation to a steady state economy. Slow consumption alone may just
provide recession or, at worse, economic chaos (Jackson 2005) – as perhaps
witnessed in the current economic and financial recession. Increasing prod-
uct life spans and decreased energy use may also enable both efficiency and
sufficiency (Cooper 2005; Jackson 2005). This includes means by which mate-
rials are used more productively (i.e., the same quantity providing a longer
service) and throughput is slowed (i.e., products are replaced less frequently,
plus, in the case of travel, reducing distance of trip or having a ‘staycation’).
Such lifecycle thinking has been brought to other sectors, such as manufactur-
ing, but it would be environmentally appropriate to utilise this approach in
tourism. Research and thinking on tourism and its impacts therefore needs to
broaden a�ention to visitor consumption beyond the points of purchase to all
phases in the life of the tourism product and experience, from start to finish
and from conception to final disposal.
Sustainable tourism consumption does not necessarily mean people holi-
daying or travelling less, although in the case of long-distance air travel there
will be a decline, but it will mean people travelling more locally and, when
people do travel long distance, potentially staying longer, travelling by the

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 Degrowing Tourism: Décroissance, Sustainable Consumption and Steady-State Tourism

most efficient means and/or paying substantially more so as to reduce the

overall environmental effects of their trip in terms of emissions, energy con-
sumption and environmental damage (Hall and Lew 2009). Although some
isolated destinations distant from their origin markets will be affected many
will benefit. Furthermore, a number of tourism businesses are already seek-
ing to develop more efficient buildings and products. Fundamental to the
application of degrowth principles to tourism is the internalisation of exter-
nal diseconomies - those costs incurred by the activity of one actor but borne
by the community at large. This idea is ostensibly in keeping with orthodox
economics. But Latouche (2006) argues that it would clear the way towards a
degrowth society as it would place the costs of our social and environmental
problems on the books of the companies responsible for them. In one sense
this means fully applying the principle of polluter pays in order to ensure that
costs as well as benefits are demonstrated in economic activities rather than
being externalised. In tourism this means accounting for the environmental
effects of tourism not just at the destination, as significant as they might be,
but throughout the entire course of the consumption and production of a
tourist trip. And in the context of tourism that will therefore bring a strong
focus on the activities of the transport sector, and airlines in particular.

TOWARDS STEADY-STATE TOURISM?

The time has come to go beyond the promotional catchphrases of tourism be-
ing the world’s ‘fastest-growing’ or ‘largest industry’ to develop a much more
balanced, systematic, integrated and sophisticated assessment of its econom-
ic, social and environmental relationships. Until this is done, tourism’s con-
tribution to sustainable well-being cannot be fulfilled. Instead, there needs
to be a focus on the development of tourism within a steady-state economy,
what we could describe as steady state tourism. Much tourism growth, as
with much economic growth in general, is already uneconomic at the present
margin as we currently measure it. As Daly (2008: 2) commented,
The growth economy is failing. In other words, the quantitative expansion
of the economic subsystem increases environmental and social costs faster
than production benefits, making us poorer not richer, at least in high-con-
sumption countries. Given the laws of diminishing marginal utility and in-
creasing marginal costs, this should not have been unexpected… It is hard to
know for sure that growth now increases costs faster than benefits since we
do not bother to separate costs from benefits in our national accounts. Instead
we lump them together as “activity” in the calculation of GDP.
Steady state tourism is a tourism system that encourages qualitative develop-
ment but not aggregate quantitative growth to the detriment of natural capi-
tal. A steady state economy, including at the destination level, can therefore
be defined in terms of ‘a constant flow of throughput at a sustainable (low)
level, with population and capital stock free to adjust to whatever size can be
maintained by the constant throughput beginning with depletion and ending

12 n Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research

 C. Michael Hall

with pollution’ (Daly 2008: 3). Such an approach therefore consciously seeks
to make the costs of growth transparent in any set of national or regional ac-
counts, including satellite accounts. In addition, visitor numbers would be
included in assessments of population stock for locations.
Sustainable tourism policies should be geared to stop tourism growing where
marginal costs equal marginal benefits. Unfortunately, much of the thinking
about tourism, even if it does acknowledge economic costs, does not fully
consider the extent to which the marginal benefits of economic growth relate
to those costs. Instead, ‘any consumption of capital, manmade or natural,
must be subtracted in the calculation of income’ (Daly 2008: 10). In one sense,
the UNWTO is right, climate change and meeting the challenge of global pov-
erty are two major issues for tourism. However, their ‘solutions’ are wrong.
Promoting medium and long-haul tourism without consideration of environ-
mental change only continues to use scarce energy resources and increase
emissions that contribute to global warming and ultimately deplete natural
capital. To be truly sustainable human capital cannot expand at the expense
of natural capital. The UNWTO approach, along with other institutions such
as the World Bank, is that the developed countries as well as the newly indus-
trialised countries should continue to grow as rapidly as possible to provide
markets for the poor and accumulate capital to invest in the less developed
world (assuming that GDP growth is actually reasonably distributed in those
countries). In contrast, a steady state approach indicates that the developed
world ‘should reduce their throughput growth to free up resources and eco-
logical space for use by the poor, while focusing their domestic efforts on de-
velopment, technical and social improvements, that can be freely shared with
poor countries’ (Daly 2008: 2).
While economic discourse needs to be challenged so to does firm level think-
ing. For example, the Friedmanite economic perspective that the social re-
sponsibility of business is to increase profits for shareholders (Friedman 1970)
is increasingly at odds with the goals of sustainable development, including
a sustainable economic and financial system. Instead, firms and economic
systems such as destinations need to be understood in a coevolutionary fash-
ion. As business ecological actors, sustainable firms should be understood
in terms of survivability and return on investment, as clearly they are not
sustainable if they cease to exist. However, the notion of survivability also
suggests that the conceptualisation of firm behaviour needs to be extended
beyond that of being solely responsible for immediate return to shareholders
and instead indicates that return needs to be understood over extended time
periods and in particular places and spaces, in a sense approximating the con-
cept of sustained yield (Hall 2009). From a degrowth perspective firms there-
fore have a concept of social responsibility that shifts from being ‘beholden to
shareholders’ to one that is more stakeholder based and includes the workers
and communities on which their survivability is partly based.

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 Degrowing Tourism: Décroissance, Sustainable Consumption and Steady-State Tourism

CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

Tourism, and long-haul international travel in particular, is causing substan-
tial global environmental change. Such tourism growth is not sustainable.
The substantive contribution of the academic debate on sustainable tour-
ism towards actually ensuring sustainable development has been negligible.
This article suggests that considerations of sustainability must be understood
within the context of political-economic discourse and has proposed the
concept of degrowth as a useful way of understanding the move towards a
steady-state economy in which sustainable tourism is both sufficient and ef-
ficient. The current policies of the UNWTO and the World Bank which are
characterised by economism, the growth based economic paradigm that fails
to distinguish between the underlying costs and benefits that lead to sim-
plistic activity measures such as GDP, are doomed to failure in providing a
sustainable base for development. Instead, a steady-state approach to tourism
and economics is required that explicitly recognises the conservation of natu-
ral capital and ecological resources as integral to notions of qualitative and
economic development. As The Observer editorial stated, in commenting on
the 2009 Climate Change Summit
… policy-making for the long term has fallen out of fashion. In fact, many
of us fell out of the habit of long-term thinking during the heady consumer
boom. That must now change.
The financial crisis has sha�ered the free-market orthodoxy that drove poli-
cy for a generation. We can now develop a new political philosophy, one that
has the principles of environmental sustainability at its core - that presents the
threat of climate change not as inevitable apocalypse, but as an opportunity
(The Observer 2009).
Both ecology and economics have their origins in the Greek root ‘oikos’
– the management of the household so as to increase its value to all members
of the household over the longer term. It is now time that the tourism indus-
try as well as those that study it acted in such a way that makes the ecological
basis of the economics of tourism paramount in order to ensure the develop-
ment of a steady state tourism industry instead of one that is contributing to
eventual ecological and therefore economic collapse.

Acknowledgements
A preliminary account of some of these ideas was presented at the Achiev-
ing Sustainable Tourism conference, Helsingborg, Sweden, September, 2007.
Feedback is gratefully acknowledged particularly from Stefan Gössling, Dan-
iel Sco� and Tim Coles. More recent comments and contributions of Alan Lew
and Sandra Wilson are also noted. The usual caveats apply.

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