From the nature tourism of the 19th century to the gentle tourism and ecotourism of today, Christian Baumgartner traces the developments towards sustainable tourism. He critically examines various political tourism approaches—from environmental and development policy organizations to the EU and the World Tourism Organization. In the second part of the work, Christian Baumgartner develops his own well-founded approach to evaluating the sustainability of tourist destinations. This allows for individual assessments in the areas of ecology, economy, socioculture, as well as institutional frameworks, and an overall evaluation of the sustainability of regional tourism. The author: Christian Baumgartner, Ph.D., studied landscape ecology at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, and was managing director of respect - I from 1995 to 2005.