Sustainable tourism: from ambition to a plan A qualitative research on environmentally sustainable tourism policies in the Dutch Hanseatic cities. Saskia Veenstra| S4593901 | Master thesis Cultural Geography and Tourism II Sustainable tourism: from ambition to a plan A qualitative research on environmentally sustainable tourism policies in the Dutch Hanseatic cities. Master thesis Cultural Geography and Tourism School of Management Radboud University Nijmegen Student: Saskia Veenstra Student number: 4593901 Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Huib Ernste Internship: MarketingOost Internship supervisor: Shelly van Winden Cover: Hanzesteden Marketing, Beeldbank Date: 30th of October, 2020 Word count: 30821 words III Preface In front of you lays my master thesis about environmentally sustainable tourism in the Dutch Hanseatic cities. After a few months of hard work the end of this research is here and it is time for me to graduate. I really enjoyed doing this research and learning more about tourism in my hometown Zwolle. This thesis also convinced me even more that studying tourism is something I am excited about and I am looking forward to start a professional career in this field. I am grateful for the people who helped me during this process of my thesis. First of all, I would like to thank my colleagues at MarketingOost for offering me the possibility to conduct my research at their organisation. I want to thank them for making the best of the working at home situation. Providing us with everything we needed to host a nice online drink, as well as regularly checking up on how I doing. Thank you for this good care. I also want to put in a special word of thanks to my supervisor at MarketingOost, Shelly van Winden. She welcomed me with open arms and helped me during the entire process of this thesis. When we started working from home, she was always available to meet online, send me interesting articles and keep me motivated. She challenged me to think outside the box and come up with creative ideas! Secondly, I want to thank my supervisor Huib Ernste for his guidance and professional feedback on my thesis. His critical reflections encouraged me to think more about the research choices I made and gave me the opportunity to improve the scientific quality of this thesis. All our (digital) conversations definitely made this research more complete. Next, I want to thank all respondents who took the time to cooperate in this research. Even though the respondents were all working hard on dealing with the consequences of the Corona crisis on the tourism sector, they made time to help out with this research. Without their willingness to help and their openness to answer all my questions I would not have been able to finish this research. Also a special word of thanks to Elizabeth Stoit, who helped me arrange these interviews and also offered me the possibility to present my results to policymakers of the Hanseatic cities. Lastly, I also want to thank my family who supported me throughout the entire process. Many thanks to my parents who let me move back home during the lockdown in the Netherlands and let me use the living room as a temporarily home office. Also thanks to my brother with whom I could share my thesis frustrations and who started our working days with some coffeehouse music. I also want to thank Jorian for the emotional support during the process and for dealing with me and my moments of stress. Lastly, I want to thank my friends for providing the necessary distraction and also for proofreading my thesis. I could not have done this without all of you. Saskia Veenstra Nijmegen, October 2020 IV Executive summary Before the Corona crisis happened, the tourism industry had been growing exponentially worldwide (Bock, 2015). This growth brings a lot of opportunities, but at the same time also a lot of problems. One of these problems is the negative impact that tourism has on its environment. To minimize these negative consequences of tourism on its environment, there is a need for sustainable tourism policies (NBTC, 2020; RLI, 2019). The Dutch Hanseatic cities along the IJssel created a new vision on tourism for the coming years. They changed their perspective from promotion to destination management (MarketingOost & NBTC, 2019). One of their main goals is to realise sustainability goals. However, there is no clear plan for this yet. This research explores the possibilities for sustainable tourism in the Dutch Hanseatic cities and how such policies can be formulated. The main question of this research is: “What are different perspectives on environmentally sustainable tourism policies in the urban tourism sector and how can such policies be formulated in the Dutch Hanseatic cities?” A case study design is used to come up with an answer to this question. Several factors are distinguished which play an important role in effective sustainable tourism policies. These factors are divided into three categories of policy instruments: economic incentives, transfer of information and legal requirements (Hoogerwerf & Herweijer, 2014). This information is gathered by conducting a literature review. Other methods used in this research are documentary research and conducting interviews with policymakers of the Hanseatic cities. The data gathered from these different methods show that most Hanseatic cities, when it comes to tourism, are trying to find a balance between benefiting from incoming tourism, whilst at the same time maintaining a high liveability standard for residents. Specific plans on implementing sustainable tourism are not yet on the agenda, but the ambition to work on it exists. Most Hanseatic cities take on a general approach to tourism and include it in many different policy fields. This research also shows that in all Hanseatic cities, there is some form of participation to involve different actors. However, in smaller cities there is more attention for involving the community in comparison with the bigger cities. The Hanseatic cities do have all the means to set up an effective process of sustainable tourism policy-making. However, the focus should be on actual measures which could be taken. Relevant actors should be included in the process and the cities need to work together to create coherent tourism policies suitable for their cities. Working together is essential for creating effective tourism policies in the Hanseatic cities, otherwise the risk is that the municipalities may shift the responsibility away from their local government and towards their mutual marketing network. Even though, the municipalities all create their own policies, they are a unity as Hanseatic cities. The research shows that this collaboration is important and should be deepened, for example by learning from each other’s experiences and by applying for subsidies together. Therefore, the municipalities should work together on the local level with relevant actors, as well as working on their marketing network level, to create effective sustainable tourism policies for their Hanseatic cities. V Table of contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Research questions and objective .................................................................................... 3 1.3 Scientific and societal relevance ....................................................................................... 4 1.3.1 Scientific relevance .................................................................................................... 4 1.3.2 Societal relevance ...................................................................................................... 5 1.4 Thesis structure ................................................................................................................ 7 2. Theoretical Framework .............................................................................................. 8 2.1 Sustainable tourism .......................................................................................................... 8 2.2 Urban tourism ................................................................................................................. 10 2.3 Role of government ........................................................................................................ 11 2.3.1 Need for government action ................................................................................... 11 2.3.2 Policy cycle ............................................................................................................... 12 2.3.3 Barriers to sustainable tourism policies................................................................... 15 2.4 Policy instruments .......................................................................................................... 15 2.4.1 Legal requirements .................................................................................................. 15 2.4.2 Economic incentives ................................................................................................ 16 2.4.3 Transfer of information ............................................................................................ 16 2.5 Factors influencing sustainable tourism policies ............................................................ 16 2.5.1 Factors influencing the natural environment