Utilising sustainable tourism indicators to determine the environmental performance of the Sun City Resort, South Africa

Abstract

The success of a tourism resort may often be the very cause of the resort’s decline as a result of the large-scale impacts that large tourism resorts may have on the environment. The long-term economic, social and environmental impacts of a tourism business have to be carefully balanced in order to achieve sustainability. These aspects should be carefully managed to ensure that tourism does not become a self-destructive process ruining the very resources upon which it was based. This paper draws from a comprehensive academic study aimed at determining the environmental performance of one of South Africa’s premier tourism resorts, namely Sun City. In this paper, however, reference is made only to the energy and water consumption patterns at Sun City. Data for the Sun City Resort was collected on a monthly basis for a four-year period, from 2010 to 2013. Through the investigation of the environmental performance of Sun City in terms of energy and water consumption the results can be benchmarked internationally to provide an indication of the environmental performance of Sun City.

Keywords: Sun City, energy consumption, water consumption, environmental performance.