Green tourism planning: Triple bottom line sustainability - rhetoric or reality. A case study of the Bluestone development

 Triple Bottom Line Sustainability (TBLS), i.e. the balancing of economic, social andenvironmental agendas, is being increasingly used as a framework for sustainabletourism development, especially in rural areas. However, the conflicting priorities ofdifferent stakeholders and the different emphases of governmental policies pose majorchallenges to its achievement. This thesis presents a case study demonstrating issuesof stakeholder empowerment in relation to TBLS in relation to the Bluestonedevelopment in west Wales - a major holiday village is aiming to create a leading UKshort-break destination and to deliver sustainable tourism. A major problem relatesto half of the development being inside the National Park with the other half outside theNational Park. Accordingly, two planning authorities were involved in granting planningpermission to the development. The case for Bluestone emphasised the provision of 600jobs - a promise which achieved a significant contribution (f 16.5M)from the public pursebefore planning permission for building inside the National Park was granted. Thisthesis explores the issue of stakeholder empowerment as illustrated through theBluestone case study which involves a range of stakeholders (the developers, local andnational government, the community, lobby groups). The research used stakeholderanalysis and a Venn diagram of TBL to identify the various stakeholders'approaches and foci on different aspects of the TBL. Discourse Analysis (DA) was usedand the case study was developed using document analysis, in-depth convergent andsemi-structured interviews, archival records, direct observation to collect data about thepriorities of different stakeholders in relation to this development. The thesis concludesthat TBLS is rhetoric not reality and can only be considered a guiding fiction. Whenforced to select between the different aspects of the TBL, this case study demonstratesthat it is the economy not the social and environmental agendas that win.