Fifth International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

Under the constant pressure of sustainability in the past decade, several new types of tourism have arisen considered to be green and environmentally friendly. One of them is rural tourism. To keep sustainability, the supply of rural tourism should ideally optimize its services following sustainable regional development. Especially, when it runs a business close to or in a protected landscape area.T he goal of this paper is to analyze the arrangement of tourism services providers in terms of sustainable tools implemented in their entrepreneurship. Based on primary data collected in 2018 by the questionnaire survey, the paper unveils if do 214 sampled tourism service providers implement elementary sustainable tools in their business such as waste sorting and towel change policy while offering accommodation. The analyzed sample occupies the protected landscape area Třeboňsko located in the south part of the Czech Republic. Moreover, this region is as well protected as UNESCO biosphere reservation which makes the area more valuable and the level of protection more important. Talking about the results, the majority accept this practice as compulsory to their business thus can harm their competitive ability in case of absence. However, they inform their customers by leaflets about the topic and appeal to the customer’s own decision. To sum up, the results show that basic tools for sustainability fulfilling are rather implemented by sampled tourism service providers. On the other hand, these practices are only the first step and many more tools should be presented.