تطوير أداء منظمي الرحلات السياحية ودوره في دعم عملية التنمية السياحية المستدامة (بالتطبيق على منظمي الرحلات السياحية في مصر)‎

Abstract EN

The tourism industry is composed of diverge establishments which provide different tourism services these are accommodation, transportation or any other services might needed by tourists, and the tour operator who is responsible for the compilation of some or all of these services, and then provide it as a service or tourist product which is called "package tour" with the increase of the number of tourist trips, associated with the development of communication means and transportation, many of the negative impacts of the tourism activity began to arise, both on the communities and on natural environments in different tourist destinations.

accordingly, there is a necessity to develop the tourism activity in the framework of the objectives and principles of sustainable development, and therefore, many of the bodies and international organizations concerned with tourism, emphasized the need to adopt different policies that support and maintain sustainable tourism development, through the integration of economic, social and environmental objectives of the tourist destinations, with the objectives which tourism facilities seek to achieve.

in light of that, the objective of this study is to investigate the performance and the role of the tour operator, as a responsible for tour itinerary has possibility to take advantage of its position in achieving the goals of sustainable tourism development and strengthening its principles.

the study focused on the methods which identified by the (WTO) to develop the performance of tour operators, in order to maximize their role in supporting the development of sustainable tourism, the researcher relied on the same methods to evaluate the performance of tour operators in Egypt with regard to their support to sustainability, in order to find out the strengths and weaknesses in their performance, and then make recommendations that will improve their performance to support sustainable tourism development .

the study results indicate that performance of most tourism companies in Egypt has a positive impact on supporting sustainable tourism development, but with some weakness and challenges.

the study concluded by presenting some recommendations that could contribute to developing the performance of the Egyptian tour operator in order to support the sustainable tourism development.