Purpose: – The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between culture-based tourism development and cultural sustainability in the established tourism destination of Gold Coast, Australia. It seeks to contribute to the debate on local development and tourism through evaluating the development of the newly-born Gold Coast Chinatown.

Design/methodology/approach: – Two types of analysis were developed for this study. The first one aims at assessing the general features of the case study site. It was done by the urban analysis of the precinct, the count of the shops associated with the identification of their function (e.g. retail, services, etc.), street visual survey, and the assessment of ethnic expression/representations. The second analysis aims at assessing place-attachment, development impacts and cultural attitude. It was done by questionnaire surveys.

Findings: – The analysis evidences mainly two findings. First, tradition, authenticity or ethnicity are not perceived as key drivers, and tangible pre-requisites do not appear as a priority for a culture-based tourism development. Second, correlation studies show the longer the length of residence the higher is the attitude towards positive perceived economic impacts and positive cultural attitudes. It is the opposite of what is usually found in literature review. As such, it challenges the concept of cultural sustainability, and helps us to reconsider the weight of the evaluative factors of community attachment, development impact and cultural attitude in tourism development.

Originality/value: – The recent creation of the Gold Coast Chinatown not only raises the question of the rationale of what is usually recognised as a community-based settlement, hence its cultural foundation and the legitimacy of transfer of cultural models, but also the processes at stake between cultural sustainability and tourism development. To the knowledge, no publication exists on this case study.