Operationalization of Sustainable Development Measurement Through Indicator Systems—Diagnosis of Possibilities and Barriers on the Example of Poznań

The concept of sustainable tourism or sustainable tourism development has been discussed by both researchers and practitioners for decades. The original challenges related to this discussion seem to have been resolved: they are concerned establishing the initial conceptual instruments and answering the question: what is sustainable tourism. The next stage involves challenges related to the operationalization of the concept of sustainable tourism development: new questions arise here: how to plan the development of tourism in a sustainable way (including—what goals should be set, on what basis?) and how to measure the level of implementation of the assumed goals. Article Objectives, Research Questions, and Methodology Finding the answer to the general research question is intended to fill the identified research gap regarding the possibilities and principles of formulating appropriate sets of indicators for measuring sustainable development for urban destinations, as well as the accompanying barriers and challenges. As a result, attempts were made to simultaneously establish a universal procedure for creating such a set of indicators and create an actual set of indicators for the city of Poznań. Triangulation of methods and perspectives was used in the research procedure: the main research problem is analyzed from both, practical and theoretical perspective. Several existing sets of indicators were analyzed, on the basis of which, a contextual set of indicators was created. The new set of indicators was evaluated by 13 experts associated with the broadly understood tourism sector, representing both various tourism sub-sectors and being business practitioners, as well as academic experts. Findings The results of the evaluation of the created system, carried out among experts using a semi-structured interview, showed the significant legitimacy of introducing an indicator system for managing the sustainable growth of tourism in the agglomeration and the high adequacy of the selection of indicators. The research procedure also revealed numerous limitations and challenges related to the implementation of the system, partly identical to those widely discussed in the literature. One of the key conclusions regarding the very procedure of creating a management system for sustainable tourism development in an urban agglomeration is the need to involve various stakeholders of the phenomenon and adapt the system to local and contextual conditions.