The Tourism Futures Simulator: a systems thinking approach

Tourism operates as a complex system. In itself, the industry contains a myriad of factors and activities which are inter-dependent. In addition, there are two-way relationships to economic, social, environmental and policy factors at various spatial levels. In collaboration with the tourism industry, CSIRO has established the Tourism Futures Project which aims to develop an innovative framework for evaluating the benefits and impacts of nature-based tourism and the policy options for managing tourism activity and development. The case study area comprises Douglas Shire in Northern Queensland and the Cairns section of the Great Barrier Reef. This paper describes the progress in developing this framework for mapping and summarizing key social, economic and environmental outcomes of various development scenarios in annual steps to the year 2020. We refer to the framework as the Tourism Futures Simulator (TFS).