Tourism development impacts and amelioration along coastal areas in Vietnam

Coastal tourism is a significant portion of the Vietnam’s economy due to diverse coastal environment with variety of ecosystems. These include wonderful natural scenery, sandy beaches, rocky headlands, sand dunes, mangroves, coral reefs, wetlands. However, unplanned tourism development caused obvious negative impacts on coastal environment, which will increase with exploitation unless preventive solutions are adopted. The main purpose of this study is to evaluate the impacts of tourism development along coastal areas with a specific focus on tourism infrastructure such as the construction of hotels, resorts, roads and recreational activities on natural environment in small islands of Nha Trang Bay, Vietnam. Then, propose solutions to minimize negative impacts and aim for sustainable tourism development. The unplanned development of resorts and recreational activities (snorkeling, scuba diving, boating, cruise ships, fishing) to meet increasing demand of tourists have led to consequences such as loss of marine biological diversity, the change of coral reefs cover, discharges into the sea, and environmental pollution.