Measuring Sustainable Tourism Development in Remote Rural ...

In Lindoso/Soajo some 57% have been outside the area for more than one year. This
is mostly due to the fact that this region has traditionally been one of the largest
exporter of reserve labour to industrialised European countries. Studies have shown
that these communities when confronted with little if any opportunities for employment
that, instead of allowing fear and panic to tear the villages apart, or, on the other
extreme, bringing the village together as a community, the young people were raised to
find solutions to their economic problems not through political pressuring and collective
action but through individual initiative and emigration (Graham, 1979).
Table 7f shows that the majority (85%) of the residents in Svaneke has lived outside
the area for more than one year. This is closely related to the level of education in the
village. It you wish to be educated above secondary school you have to go to school in
the other end of the island and if you wish to graduate you need to move from the
island.
Conclusion
As relevant literature has suggested, many are the communities in remote areas that
have compromised the needs of the resident community to achieve tourism
development goals. While in the short term such compromises at the expense of local
interests may seem appropriate courses of action, there may be negative
repercussions at a later date (Gill and Williams, 1994: 218). The effect of these
changes is the decline and erosion of traditional communities and life styles and an
alteration of the whole economic and social system in the rural areas. Communities
are no longer cohesive entities, and this in turn has an effect on both the viability of and
participation in leisure activities (Arnott and Duffield, n.d.). This case study has
examined residents´ perceptions of the impacts of tourism in communities in two
peripheral regions of Europe. A quantitative survey was carried out in order to
measure the perceived attitudes of tourism development in specific communities in
each of the regions. The survey results show that the attitudes of residents has been
most effected where tourism development is more advanced, and suggests how the
expectations of tourism will inevitably alter communities desperately seeking to
improve the quality of life of people living in remote areas and attempt to put an end to
the rural exodus.