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Once a suitable definition of sustainable tourism is established, criteria must be selected to determine whether sustainable tourism is present in a destination or not. A major initial step in this process is to identify a set of appropriate indicators, or variables that provide information about some phenomenon (in this case, sustainability), so that tourism and other sectors can be managed accordingly (Hamilton 8c Attwater 1997). A candidate list of potential indicators, taking into account the sustainability of the destination as well as its tourism sector, is provided in figure 11.3. These indicators are organised into environmental, economic, social, cultural and management categories, as well as their hybrids, and can be related to the material that was presented in chapters 8 and 9. For example, all of the environmental indicators can be classified as either stressor activities, environmental stresses, environmental responses or human responses, as appropriate (though some human responses are also placed under the management category), as per the OEGD framework for' assessing environmental impacts (see section 9.5.1). Several of the indicators are identified as composite indices, meaning that they attempt to take into account two or more specific indicators at the same time.

Most destinations are unable for financial reasons to measure and monitor all of the indicators listed in figure 11.3. The purpose of the figure, therefore, is mainly to provide destination planners and managers with a comprehensive list of possibilities from which a suitable and feasible selection of indicators can be made. Some of the indicators are easy to obtain and may already be available — for example, number of visitors, number of accommodation units, etc. At the opposite end of the spectrum, information on indicators such as habitat stress may be extremely difficult to collect, due to gaps of knowledge in this field and/or' the expense involved iir their collection. Other' problems reflect the relatively incipient state of sustainable tourism indicator research and political realities. These shortcomings include:

• An incompatibility between the timeframe for the monitoring of indicators and the identification of outcomes (which is long-term) and the realities of the political decision-making process (which is short-term).

• Discontinuities in space between cause and effect, wherein a factor that is hindering sustainability in a destination may actually have its origins irr another location. For example, polluted water at a beach resort may be dtie to an oil spill that is several thousand kilometres away and over which the destination has no control.

• The great diversity of tourism, including its 'fuzzy' boundaries (e.g. the existence of indirect arrd induced effects), means that it is often difficult to determine whether' a cause or effect is associated with tourism or some other sector; for example, a residential housing estate that destroys rare wildlife habitat may be populated by tourism workers ana1 their families, suggesting arr induced relationship with tourism.

• There is a lack of reliable indicator benchmarks and thresholds. Benchmarks are some value against which subsequent changes can be compared (e.g. 65 per cent of a destination was covered by natural habitat in 1955 — all subsequent values can be reported as a percentage of this benchmark). Thresholds represent a critical value for sustainability; when the threshold is exceeded, this indicates an unsustainable situation.

• There is a lack of a framework for determining which combination of indicators best indicates whether the overall tourism industry is sustainable. Because of the uncertainties and complexities associated with indicators, it is perhaps impossible to determine with complete certainty whether a destination is sustainable or not; more prudent is an assessment that a destination appears to be sustainable or unsustainable (though usually the latter can be judged with far more certainty)- If a reasonable attempt is made to identify measure and monitor indicators, and to implement remedial changes where warranted, then there is an increased likelihood that the destination will be more sustainable. To abandon the effort altogether because of these problems, however, is to virtual!}' guarantee an unsustainable outcome.