An Updated Framework for Theoretical and Practical Engagement with Sustainable Tourism Quality Control Tools

Quality control tools, such as certification programs, translate sustainable tourism into practice. Recent scholarship demonstrates considerable tool diversification, yet further theoretical and practical engagement is impeded by the absence of an updated conceptual framework. This conceptual research is the first to extend the only existing framework, the one-dimensional Quality Control Spectrum, after more than 15 years of quiescence. The proposed three-dimensional framework illustrates 26 tools organized across function categories (how each tool progresses sustainability), toolboxes (expressions of strength) and operational Fordism (expressions of adaptability). This reconceptualized diversity highlights tools facilitating flexible post-Fordist and less flexible Fordist models of sustainable tourism. The identification of “neo-Fordist” tools, which fuse characteristics of Fordist and post-Fordist practice, is a related substantive contribution. The framework provides a new paradigmatic basis for future theoretical engagement with sustainable tourism while offering a framework for pragmatic practitioner engagement.