ABSTRACT Rural tourism contributes towards socio-economic development. In South Africa, rural areas experience significant development challenges with limited opportunities. Rural tourism as an instrumental tool against poverty requires rural tourism products to be not only viable but also sustainable. Presented is a sustainability assessment framework to assist South African enterprises to assess the sustainability of their rural tourism products (RTPs). The framework has two functions: it provides RTP operators with an understanding of all aspects of sustainability for which they are responsible and it provides indicators to measure the sustainability of the product. The indicators are presented as a sustainability scale that acts like a road map to enable operators to improve the sustainability of their RTPs in successive years. The intention and purpose of the framework is to ensure that sustainability is central to the operation of RTPs in South Africa thereby contributing toward sustainable development goals.

中文翻译：

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提高南非乡村旅游产品可持续性的评估

摘要 乡村旅游有助于社会经济发展。在南非，农村地区面临着机遇有限的重大发展挑战。乡村旅游作为脱贫工具，要求乡村旅游产品不仅可行而且可持续。提出了一个可持续性评估框架，以帮助南非企业评估其乡村旅游产品 (RTP) 的可持续性。该框架有两个功能：它使 RTP 运营商了解他们负责的可持续性的所有方面，并提供衡量产品可持续性的指标。这些指标以可持续性等级的形式呈现，就像路线图一样，使运营商能够连续几年提高其 RTP 的可持续性。