TY - JOUR AU - Salman, Ahmad AU - Jaafar, Mastura AU - Mohamad, Diana PY - 2020/12/30 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - A comprehensive review of the role of Ecotourism in sustainable tourism development JF - e-Review of Tourism Research JA - eRTR VL - 18 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - UR - https://ertr-ojs-tamu.tdl.org/ertr/article/view/482 SP - 215-233 AB - <p>Sustainable tourism alone without ecotourism was facing difficulty in achieving environmental protection goals, awareness, socio-cultural protection, and economic development. Ecotourism can be seen as a tool to strengthen sustainable tourism because it emphasizes sustainable tourism principles. Thus, this paper aimed to understand the role of ecotourism in achieving sustainable tourism. To achieve this aim, the study shortlisted and reviewed 22 articles from peer-reviewed journals dated from 2005-2018 and analyzed journal articles related to ecotourism that focused on understanding the significance of ecotourism's role in supporting sustainable tourism development. Three main themes emerged after analyzing the articles, which were economic, environmental, and socio-culture. The proper implementation of ecotourism can help the destination economically, socially, and environmentally by creating more jobs, developing investment opportunities, protecting the culture, environment, and destination's natural resources. This paper identified three critical roles of ecotourism in achieving sustainable tourism and described its benefits as well. Moreover, with the help of this review, this study reduces the knowledge gap regarding the paucity of research on this topic, which is one of its major contributions.</p> ER -