Sustainable Destination Development in Practice : Can accommodation businesses contribute to cultural landscape preservation? The case of the Ökomodell Hindelang

Sammanfattning: The focus of this research lies on the possibilities and willingness of accommodation businesses to work for and towards sustainability in a destination. The area of investigation is the municipality of Bad Hindelang located in the German Alps. The so called Ökomodell stands for a collaboration agreement between agriculture and the municipality in order to preserve Bad Hindelang’s ecologically and touristically extremely valuable cultural landscape through continued traditional pasture-based livestock farming. The point of departure for this research is the destination’s goal to bring the accommodation sector on board. Two questions are particularly relevant in this context. First, to what extend do accommodation businesses recognize the Ökomodell’s importance for their own success as tourism stakeholders? And second, what factors influence their willingness to implement appropriate sustainability measures? The approach chosen for this research is mixed methods. Both, qualitative semi-structured expert interviews as well as a quantitative survey have been conducted. The results lay open the perspective of accommodation providers in Bad Hindelang. They have shown to be aware of agriculture being the condition for landscape preservation and thus long-term success in tourism. However, their willingness to contribute by implementing suggested sustainability actions is influenced by a multitude of other factors; above all, the costs and benefits going along as well as their level of engagement and foresight as tourism entrepreneurs.