The global social, economic and environmental impacts of tourism are immense and highly complex. Given that a high percentage of tourism involves visits to naturally and culturally distinguished sites, generating large amounts of revenue, there are clearly major opportunities for investing in the maintenance and sustainable use of biological resources. At the same time, efforts must be made to minimize the adverse impacts of the tourism industry on the environment.
Historical observation indicates that self-regulation of the tourism industry for sustainable use of biological resources has only rarely been successful. This is due to a number of factors. First, as there are many individual operators, local environmental conditions may be viewed as a type of common property resource. It will not be in the interests of any individual operator to invest more than his or her competitors in maintaining the general environmental standards in the resort. Similarly, operators are very likely to "export" their adverse environmental impacts, such as refuse, waste water and sewage, to parts of the surrounding area unlikely to be visited by tourists. This reaches its most extreme form in so-called "enclave" tourism, where tourists may remain for their entire stay in an artificially maintained environment isolated from its surroundings.
International tourism operates in an increasingly global market in which investors and tourists have an ever-widening choice of destinations. Indeed the search for new and novel areas and experiences is one of the major engines driving the tourism life-cycle. Moreover, much of the tourism industry is controlled by financial interests located away from tourist destinations. When environmental conditions begin to deteriorate in a given location, operators are likely to shift to alternative locations rather than to invest in improving those conditions.
The international tourism market is fiercely competitive, much of it operating on low profit margins. Operators are therefore often extremely reluctant to absorb any additional costs associated with improving environmental conditions, and instead will often find it economically expedient to shift their area of operation rather than face such costs.