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ween tourists, host communities, businesses, attractions and the environment is complex, interactive and symbiotic. The host population is itself a part of the tourism ‘place’ product. The locals are subjects to be viewed and interacted with, or settings for tourist activities, and their attitudes and behaviour constitute the ‘hospitality’ resource of a destination (Smith, 1994). According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) (1993), tourism is sustainable when it “improves the quality of life of the host community; provides a high quality of experience for the visitor; and maintains the quality of the environment on which both the host community and the visitor depend”.

Smith and Krannich (1998) identified host communities in three types as either tourism saturated, tourism realized or tourism hungry. Tourism hungry communities can maintain positive attitudes despite negative impacts as long as economic benefits are forthcoming. In general, economic benefits are an important influence on residents’ attitudes towards tourism (Haralambopoulos & Pizam, 1994; King, Pizam, & Milman, 1992; Lindberg & Johnson, 1997).

An evocative way to analyse sustainable tourism is to scrutinize how it can meet the needs of the host population in terms of improve standards of living in the short and long term. “If social and economic development means anything at all, it must mean a clear improvement in the conditions of life and livelihood of ordinary people” (Friedmann, 1992). The more local people gain from tourism the more they will support tourism activities and the more they will be motivated to protect the natural resources and heritages. If the resident do not get any benefits from tourism they will try to drive tourists away from the destination and as a tourists no one like to visit a place where they are not welcomed (Zhenhua Liu, M, 2003).

In Butler’s (1980) destination Life Cycle a destination evolves–exploration, involvement, development, consolidation and stagnation. Residents’ attitudes depend, in part, on these stages. Doxey (1976) described that resident’s attitudes are positive during the initial stages of tourism development such as in exploration, involvement and in development stages but become increasingly negative as a destination evolves towards stagnation.

Working in partnership:

Sustainable development requires involvement of various government departments, public and private sector companies, community groups and experts to be successful (Wahab & Pigram, 1998). The development is determined by answering what the stakeholders want it to be and Stakeholders include tourist; tourist businesses including investors, developers, operators, shareholders, management, employees, public and private sectors; the host community and their government (Zhenhua Liu, 2003). All stakeholders and different groups are always important for gaining the goal of sustainable tourism development. The history of tourism developments has shown that all groups are equally important and that long-range objectives and sustainability not possible to achieve if one group is continually subordinated to the others. Sustainable tourism development requires consecutively meeting the needs of the tourists, the tourist businesses, the host community and the needs for environmental protection (Zhenhua Liu, 2003). It mentioned by Zhenhua Liu (2003), as Bramwell and Lane (2000)