Introduction : innovation for tourism sustainability

Innovation is a way to address the grand challenges of our time, be it cutting greenhouse gas emissions, providing clean energy, ensuring food and water security, addressing health and development challenges or protecting the environment. Innovation is essentially about adapting to, and bringing about, change. The tourism sector is one particularly vulnerable to macro-economic, geo-political, environmental, technological and social change. Innovative firms are those responding to change in ways that ensure their survival and enhance their competitiveness. In view of sustainability, however, innovation should also contribute to positive environmental and social change. This requires us to think differently about innovation.