SMEs and Sustainable Tourism

This paper examines the impacts of unplanned growth of tourism SMEs on civic infrastructure and the environment at Manali-a major tourist destination of Himachal Pradesh. Using indicator's framework, impacts of tourism on the economic, social, environmental aspects are studied and it is seen that SMEs working in isolation are damaging the environment at the destination. While the local community is paying the cost of tourism development in the form of degradation of environmental resources, commercialization of landscape and congestion; majority of the economic benefits are flowing to the expatriates making tourism at the destination unsustainable. For achieving sustainable tourism development at the destination through public-private partnership, a Community Benefit Tourism Initiative (CBTI) model is proposed.