While tourism is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, development has often been in conflict with maintaining the beauty of a region. Much tourist development is marketing-led and marketing techniques play a major role in attracting tourists to a region. This paper argues that if a tourist region is to exist and be economically viable, it needs to embrace economic and social objectives to achieve growth and market development, and at the same time incorporate environmental perspectives to sustain the unique and attractive qualifies of the region. Although this ideal can be accepted at a theoretical level, it is very difficult to achieve in practice. This paper discusses the findings from a comparative study of the recent development of two small regions in Europe with many distinctive similarities: Northern Cyprus and Northern Ireland. The study finds that there are some conflicts between marketing-led tourist development and sustainable maintenance of the natural environment in both the regions.