Sustainable Tourism Strategies for Maintaining Citizen’s Quality of Life and Tourism Activities

This paper explores the effective tourism strategies that tackle overtourism and maintain residents’ quality of life (QoL.) Given the current tourism situation where many cities have been witnessing overcrowding at destinations, a phenomenon known as overtourism, residents’ quality of life has deteriorated in terms of congestion in public transportation and tourism annoyances. Since sustaining residents’ quality of life is vital to tackle overtourism and continuing further tourism development, this thesis explored the following research question: “How have the cities of Kyoto and Vienna ensured citizen’s QoL while continuing to develop tourism activities?” Moreover, as both cities have shifted their focus to quality tourism, the following sub-question was also explored which is “What specific strategies have been implemented to promote quality tourism?” The goal of this thesis is to investigate the effective tourism strategies that Kyoto and Vienna have implemented and how they have ensured residents' QoL in their strategies. Given that both cities have been illustrating healthy tourism development and gaining support from their residents, a variety of strategies proposed in this thesis might help tourism stakeholders to select or adapt tourism strategies to their tourism contexts. Since the current literature lacks empirical cases on how residents’ QoL is exactly implemented in tourism policies (Berbekova et al., 2023), it is academically significant to find effective tourism strategies that tackle overtourism and residents’ QoL. In addition, since residents’ QoL is negatively affected due to overtourism, it is socially significant maintain residents’ QoL and incorporate it into tourism strategies. In this thesis, qualitative content analysis on Kyoto and Vienna’s tourism policies has been conducted by using Objective QoL Indicators and applying the TPCQ model to analyze the data. In total 11 documents were collected and QoL indicators were used to identify the types of QoL maintained in tourism policies and TPCQ model was used to understand the way they have ensured residents’ QoL in their strategies. The main finding is that both Kyoto and Vienna have shifted their focus to quality tourism and have been aiming to enhance citizens' livability as well as tourist experiences. Kyoto and Vienna have ensured residents’ QoL through promotion of lesser-known areas, upgrading the tourism segment, and making the local population aware of the benefits of tourism. This will help maintain the quality of life of the local population and gain residents’ support for further tourism development.