Reconsidering the concept of sustainable development and growth in tourism Tourism as an economic concept Tourism is defined as travel with a stopover at the destination. The simplicity of this definition leaves room for the greatest possible variety of reasons behind the tourism. Tourism is in fact a complex phenomenon, but it always involves visitors. Problems arise in relation to the pressure on space and on the environment due to the physical flow of these visitors as they travel from A to B, take overnight accommodation and try to enjoy themselves. In economic terms this flow of tourists becomes important each time the visitors spend money for goods and services. From the point of view of the economy tourism is another form of final consumption by households. In the case of business travel, tourism is intermediate consumption necessary for production. Again from the economic point of view, development may be considered sustainable when thanks to the spending of the visitors in a given region or location it is possible to achieve high value added over the long term while minimising the consumption of resources and pollution. Tourism indeed is not like any other industry or economic sector. It is only possible to define it in terms of demand. The indigenous or foreign tourist, who may be a excursionist or an overnight visitor, spends money for a basket of services of his own choosing. These tourism services are produced by a whole series of companies in different sectors of the economy. In selecting different services according to his needs and desires the tourist creates his own product in each case. A true industry is created only if the travel organisers or the destination managers arrange the trip for the traveller, as a complete package. There are however whole sectors that would either not exist or would be relatively unimportant without tourism. Notable examples are civil aviation, and hotels and catering. But tourism demand benefits a great many economic sectors that the man-in-the-street would not normally identify with the tourism industry. The retail trade, telecommunications and banks are three examples. Another is the state, which benefits from tourism in the form of fiscal revenues, i.e. taxes of all kinds. The conflicting demands of growth and environment protection During the first Chamonix tourism summit a well nourished debate took place on the ecological dimension of sustainable development as a political concept. One of the conclusions reached was that the squandering of natural resources and the resulting pollution of the environment will limit economic growth in the long term. This is particularly true of tourism which makes commercial use of natural resources and capitalises on an environment of unspoilt surroundings. The first summit also discussed the conflict of interests that exists between the need to protect the environment and the need for economic growth. It was also pointed out that zero growth is not sustainable from the point of view of the economy. In a market economy it would go hand in hand with losses in revenues and a worsening in the quality of life. It was also pointed out that even middle-of-the-road quality growth is not economically sustainable. It is of course possible to generate more income and obtain growth in real terms with a number of visitors that remains stable or even decreases. But in conditions of international competition it is simply not possible to increase value added and prices ad infinitum. Problems associated with sustainability and growth in tourism A nation or a location therefore needs some extra growth in order to make better use of existing tourism capacities or to exploit new ones. On first examination it seems possible to obtain growth in tourism without any problems. Tourism is thus considered a sector with exponential growth and enormous potential for the future. It is on the basis of this assumption that for the past few decades the emphasis has been on ecological management rather than on stimulating economic growth. It is true indeed that the number of tourists increases steadily. But that is not to say that tourism management is a trouble-free profession. From the management point of view there is no such thing as a tourism paradise. To begin with tourism demand suffers from ups and down in relation to the economic climate plus a host of other exogenous risk factors. Economic success is never guaranteed in the tourism sector. As one of the most internationalalised sectors indeed it is a prey to all the effects of globalised competition. In the long term the development of products and services -- in the real circumstances of a tourism-dependent company, a tourism resort or a tourism country -- depends on a whole series of factors that do not always evolve in a favourable way. Ensuring the sustainability of a company or a tourism site is therefore a difficult task, despite tourism's high natural growth potential. The second tourism summit will not therefore concern itself with presenting an ill-digested array of astronomical figures supposed to prove that tourism at some more or less distant date in the future will become the most important of all economic sectors on a worldwide scale. What the conference will do is to extrapolate from current market trends to identify the factors that contribute to success over the long term for the sustainable economic growth of tourism destinations. It will be the first time any such conference has fully investigated the final causes that determine the international competitiveness of tourism destinations.