Since the rise of mass tourism across the globe in the 1970s, the industry has seen rapid and often uncontrolled growth, with international annual tourist arrivals increasing far faster in proportion to population growth. While first lauded as an ideal development strategy for emerging economies with limited resources and export potential, tourism is increasingly regarded as an agent of potential harm to local communities and environments, offering only limited economic benefits for local labor. Today, the dangers of mass tourism, tourism dependency, and overtourism are highlighted in academic scholarship and broader cultural discourses within and outside of host communities. Examination of academic discourse surrounding tourism development since the 1970s presents an evolving ideological narrative and definitive “brand” of tourism development that becomes increasingly critical of unrestrained growth and its consequences over time. A recognizable narrative of industry growth, characterized by competing and emerging paradigms of neoliberal development, sustainable tourism development, and tourism degrowth, can be pinpointed, but it remains unclear how international organizations devoted to the global governance of tourism, namely United Nations Tourism (UN Tourism), react to and incorporate these paradigms. Thus, the question remains: in what ways has an evolving ideological narrative of tourism as a development strategy, as set forth in academia and societal discourse, been formalized by international organizations over time? How do international organizations’ concerns for legitimacy and survival complicate this narrative? This thesis undertakes content analysis of select UN Tourism declarations from 1980 to 2019 organized into four decade-long eras, qualitatively examining what the rhetoric and language of these documents reveals of a formalized and universalized narrative of tourism development. I propose that, while these documents will broadly reflect identifiable shifts in perspectives on tourism, they will simultaneously assert a different narrative of tourism development that is less about the sector itself and more about UN Tourism’s own objectives of maintaining organizational legitimacy and survival.