Sustainable Tourism Law

PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE TOURISM – THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE 815 The court was of the opinion that ‘public use’ does not necessarily mean that there must be a free and unlimited access for all the public all the time. Apartment hotels and “vacation apartments” can be considered as conforming to the requirement of public use as long as they are not used as ordinary dwellings on a permanent basis but are put at the disposal of a managing company during most of the year for itinerant tourists and vacationers. To conclude: tourism development plans should conform to the notion of sustainability, which also secures the rights and wellbeing of the local public. Those rights are also expected to be backed by law and to be protected by the courts. In Israel the courts of law have lived up to these expectations. APPENDIX: DETAILS TO BE INCLUDE IN TOURISM AREA PLANS Details in the National plan: The general directives prescribed by the National Plan include, inter alia, the following: A local plan for a tourism area should list the uses of the land, including the mixture of accommodation, and should set-up instructions in regard to the density and design of constructions, access roads, sewage disposal, etc. Most importantly: it should not allow uses which may be in contradiction to sustainable touristic development. Consequently, an entrepreneur applying for a permit for the construction of an area he designates for tourism purposes, particularly in areas were the environment is considered as sensitive to changes in its uses, must provide a report on the possible implications of his plans on the environment. When entrepreneurs tried to construct ordinary residence houses in areas designated for tourism hotels only, sometimes they claimed that in unstable tourism market conditions, a project which was exclusively to be used as a hotel for tourists could not be profitable. In the past they sometimes relied on the fact that some plans and permits for tourism areas allowed the construction of “apartment hotels” or “vacation house”, without having set a definition for those terms. As mentioned, this led to a series of court cases, where residence houses disguised as hotels or vacation houses were found to be violating the law. In view of the above, the term “apartment hotel” was abolished by the Ministry of Tourism. Instead, another term – “special hotel accommodations”