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This paper provides an empirical application of some recent developments in the social science of sustainability to understanding sustainable transport behaviour. We analyse talk about holidaymaking taken from interviews with self-defined "eco" or "sustainable" tourists. The focus of this paper explores the ways in which participants understand and reconcile the potential conflict of air transport and the notion of sustainable holidays. We identify a number of discursive strategies participants used to project and maintain positive self-representations in the context of complex, often incompatible constructions of sustainability derived from this particular dilemma. Such strategies are considered as concrete examples of the psychosocial organisation of denial and thus offer discursive barriers to sustainable transport futures. However, the analysis also demonstrates the ways in which some individuals were able to resist or challenge such forms of socially organised denial. The potential implications of these discursive barriers and strategies for sustainable transport futures and the tourism sector are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current climate of intense turbulence, tourism must transform to a more sustainable development platform. Yet it remains unclear how the concept of sustainability is embedded at different levels of government policy and planning, and how this has evolved over time. This paper identifies the concept of sustainability as it is articulated in 339 Australian tourism strategic planning and policy documents published between 2000 and 2011. The paper examines the extent to which the concept of sustainable tourism is evident in the discourse of Australian tourism strategic planning documents at the national, state, regional and local levels, as well as the balance of the discourse in relation to sustainability objectives. The results show that the frequency of occurrence of sustainability as a concept has slightly increased in strategies over the past decade. At the same time, there has been a shift in the conceptualisation of sustainability, with thinking evolving from nature-based, social and triple bottom line concepts toward a focus on climate change, responsibility, adaption and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]