Tourism’s resilience relies on sustainable, regenerative, needs-based models

For tour­ism des­tin­a­tions and ser­vice pro­viders to sur­vive and thrive in the face of cur­rent and loom­ing chal­lenges they must become more resi­li­ent, accord­ing to K Michael Hay­wood. Prof Hay­wood argues that this can be achieved by demo­crat­ising ‘com­munit­ies-as-des­tin­a­tions’ and enact­ing prin­ciples of sus­tain­ab­il­ity and regen­er­a­tion.

It’s a “Good Tour­ism” Insight. (You too can write a “GT” Insight.)

Tourism’s reviv­al may be under­way, though its resi­li­ence is being severely tested. 

The Race for Tomor­row, for example, is being usurped by vis­it­or attri­tion, trans­port­a­tion snafus, extreme staff­ing prob­lems, soar­ing food and energy costs, tangled sup­ply chains, and ‘greed-fla­tion’; all lead­ing to value-dis­rup­tion. Good growth is hampered.

Chart­ing the way for­ward will be a monu­ment­al chal­lenge. Routine prob­lems may be a first order of busi­ness, but it’s the more press­ing soci­et­al and eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ties, cli­mate and con­flict issues, plus a slew of future prob­lems that seem bey­ond grasp.

Their avoid­ance, how­ever, sig­nals indif­fer­ence to gen­er­at­ing pro­duct­ive poten­tial — eco­nom­ic, social, cul­tur­al, and envir­on­ment­al regen­er­a­tion — thereby short­chan­ging oppor­tun­it­ies to thrive, to live with con­vic­tion and mean­ing, and to be trans­form­at­ive in cre­at­ing con­sequen­tial value. 

Tourism’s strategic resilience

Des­pite a hanker­ing for longev­ity, organ­isa­tions and des­tin­a­tions face a con­ver­gence of nov­el risks. They now have to con­tend with the fal­lout from a loom­ing reces­sion and their inad­equate crisis response capabilities.

Financial resilience

With strategies con­stantly in con­ten­tious inter­ac­tion with dis­rupt­ive oppos­ites, the man­age­ment of risks is fraught; more so when the status quo derails plan­ning. Plans and policies may be ill-fated unless there is fin­an­cial resi­li­ence. 

Suf­fi­cient liquid­ity, for example, must be avail­able to cope with sea­son­al or severe drops in demand, increases in costs, and oth­er response-related requirements. 

The revi­sion and craft­ing of more desir­able and innov­at­ive func­tion­al­it­ies requires a con­sid­er­able invest­ment in time, energy, and money, as does the cre­ation of more sus­tain­able, value-added products and experiences.

So, to achieve resi­li­ence, organ­isa­tions and des­tin­a­tions have to stretch their ima­gin­a­tions in order to reshape and anti­cip­ate changes in demand; know­ing what vis­it­ors want before they do. 

This is true for all stake­hold­ers, espe­cially when faced with life-alter­ing adversities. 

Don’t miss “Good Tour­ism” con­tent tagged with
“Tour­ism resi­li­ence and recovery”

Social resilience

Regard­less of the stage of growth, great effort must be put into devel­op­ing the forti­tude to nev­er give up on employ­ees, cus­tom­ers, com­munit­ies, and citizens. 

This led Van­couver Island Tour­ism to rethink their capa­cit­ies, which res­ul­ted in their renewed focus on social impact; a call-out to all DMOs seek­ing to provide com­munity shared value as part of their com­mit­ment to endur­ing suc­cess. 

Resi­li­ence is par­tic­u­larly con­tin­gent on the abil­ity to attract, hold onto, and devel­op tal­ent. To resolve the blows from the ‘great resig­na­tion’, organ­isa­tions will have to demon­strate com­pas­sion regard­ing indi­vidu­als’ per­son­al resi­li­ence, and work harder to inspire a diverse and sat­is­fied work­force. 

To do so, trust must be rebuilt.

Technological resilience

With our digit­al world requir­ing high­er degrees of tech­no­lo­gic­al resi­li­ence, it’s cru­cial to keep up with shift­ing cus­tom­er, sup­pli­er, and organ­isa­tion­al require­ments, and to util­ise tech­no­logy (e.g. AI) to advance pro­ductiv­ity and sup­port a slew of oper­a­tion­al, reg­u­lat­ory, and secur­ity demands. 

Reputational resilience

Repu­ta­tion­al resi­li­ence may be one of the most intan­gible and fleet­ing of assets. It’s bolstered when organ­isa­tions and des­tin­a­tions com­mit to improv­ing the qual­ity of their offer­ings, keep­ing their brand prom­ises and com­mit­ments to envir­on­ment­al, social, and gov­ernance (ESG) requirements.

Giv­en the dynam­ism, chal­lenges, and oppor­tun­it­ies in var­ied mar­ket­places, resi­li­ence of all types requires adapt­ab­il­ity and decis­ive­ness. As we’re learn­ing, this occurs when des­tin­a­tion and organ­isa­tion­al busi­ness mod­els become sus­tain­able, regen­er­at­ive, and truly reflect the needs of society. 

Tourism’s comprehensive sustainability

The cumu­lat­ive crises and col­lat­er­al dam­age brought about by cli­mate change, tox­ic hate, pan­dem­ics, poverty, food insec­ur­ity, and envir­on­ment­al degrad­a­tion, have mag­ni­fied the neces­sity for all com­munit­ies and indus­tries to become com­pre­hens­ively sus­tain­able and socially and cul­tur­ally sensitive.

Where­as besieged des­tin­a­tions, like Ams­ter­dam, might seek tourism’s degrowth, the real demand is for ‘good growth’; the who, what, when, where, and why of devel­op­ment that cre­ates trans­form­at­ive (eco­nom­ic, social, cul­tur­al, and nat­ur­al) value. 

Bey­ond the cre­ation of busi­nesses and jobs, how­ever, value cre­ation may be deemed absent if tourism’s unto­ward effects are ignored, par­tic­u­larly with­in our fra­gile ‘umwelt’ world and its highly inter­act­ive func­tion­al circle of humans and all spe­cies. Con­sider the beaches at The Last Resort. 

Stra­tegic resi­li­ence cer­tainly requires sus­tain­ab­il­ity to be oper­a­tion­al­ised. But what hap­pens when it is under­mined by mind­less offer­ings that counter good deeds? 

Now, more than ever, organ­isa­tion­al require­ments for growth and profits go for naught unless skewed towards value cre­ation that is com­pre­hens­ively sus­tain­able. 

Don’t miss “Good Tour­ism” con­tent tagged with
“Sus­tain­able tour­ism and regen­er­at­ive tourism”

Tour­ism can (has to) become a prime source for renewed socio-eco­nom­ic ‘well­th’. 

In des­tin­a­tions, such as Bar­ba­dos, there may be few bet­ter options than to seek more real­ist­ic mar­ket solu­tions and trans­form­a­tions that lead to the devel­op­ment of nov­el con­cep­tions of busi­ness, con­sump­tion, and experience. 

But only if the pur­pose of tour­ism is re-thought and con­tained with­in com­pre­hens­ive sus­tain­ab­il­ity frame­works that favour value-cre­ation inten­tion­ally designed to pro­tect and hon­our people, place, and planet. 

In this light, future-for­ward points-of-view will neces­sit­ate com­mand of the car­bon issue, engage­ment in the trans­ition to clean energy, and a demand that the fossil fuel industry decar­bon­ise. 

By work­ing col­lab­or­at­ively to resolve these issues, even extreme heat, the industry can live up to its poten­tial as a build­er of a bet­ter world. 

Indeed, it begins at loc­al levels by explain­ing and explor­ing com­pre­hens­ive sus­tain­ab­il­ity and how it fosters long-term resi­li­ence by provid­ing sub­stan­tial, intan­gible and tan­gible bene­fits to all.

Regenerative tourism

Resi­li­ence and sus­tain­ab­il­ity can­not be stra­tegic or com­pre­hens­ive unless post-trau­mat­ic growth and trans­form­at­ive value-laden out­comes become paramount.

If only more organ­isa­tions and des­tin­a­tions would link the pro­tec­tion of the ‘com­mons’ to their pur­pose and sign the Cli­mate Friendly Travel Registry. Doing so would provide a cred­ible endorse­ment for sup­port­ing tourism’s growth, inclu­sion, and sus­tain­ab­il­ity.  

With regen­er­at­ive busi­ness prac­tices the new norm, organ­isa­tions will be obliged to take “a sys­tems-think­ing approach to cre­ate mutu­ally bene­fi­cial feed­back loops between phys­ic­al, nat­ur­al, eco­nom­ic, social, com­munity, and human cap­it­al” in order for mag­ni­fi­cence or net pos­it­ive value to become the ulti­mate goal. 

It can­not be willed. 

Rather, what’s required is a rad­ic­al redis­tri­bu­tion of power: Power for all. 

To derive what, col­lect­ively, com­munit­ies-as-des­tin­a­tions truly value, col­lab­or­at­ive wis­dom must be sought. The Regen­er­at­ive Com­munit­ies Net­work shows it can be done. 

But little will tran­spire until indi­vidu­al enter­prises and des­tin­a­tions become pro­fi­cient at cre­at­ing just and health­i­er ver­sions of tour­ism. Now. Or what Columbi­ans say, Ahora. 

Don’t miss oth­er “GT” Insights by K Michael Haywood

Such an adjust­ment, how­ever, requires demo­crat­ising work and com­munit­ies, rebuild­ing social cap­it­al, and regen­er­at­ing cul­ture (while neg­at­ing cul­tur­al appro­pri­ation). 

This brings to mind recon­cili­ation pro­cesses with Indi­gen­ous peoples and tourism’s not-so-subtle role in per­petu­at­ing the Doc­trine of Dis­cov­ery (which needs repudiation).

Giv­en the vast array of oth­er calam­it­ies affect­ing, or affected by, tour­ism, des­tin­a­tion-spe­cif­ic regen­er­at­ive recon­struc­tion frame­works need to be created. 

To this end, it would be noble if gov­ern­ment recov­ery pro­grams required that fin­an­cial aid be con­tin­gent upon invest­ment in clearly iden­ti­fi­able regen­er­at­ive activities. 

All told, trans­form­at­ive regen­er­a­tion rep­res­ents an invit­a­tion to engage in insight­ful, value-enhan­cing pro­cesses that affirm the desire for and dynam­ics of healthy eco­sys­tems and highly adapt­ive and emer­gent com­munit­ies-as-des­tin­a­tions. 

With the inten­tion “to co-cre­ate a future where human­ity has a regen­er­at­ive impact on the plan­et … regen­er­at­ing social cohe­sion, vibrant region­al eco­nom­ies, and the re-dis­cov­ery of mean­ing and pur­pose”, all of us engaged in tour­ism can do far more to invig­or­ate and for­ti­fy resi­li­ence and sus­tain­ab­il­ity. 

After all, we all desire to tell and share bet­ter stor­ies of who we are and want to be.

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote, com­ment, or ques­tion below. Or write a “GT” Insight of your own. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive on travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Can tour­ism be resi­li­ent, like ivy? Image by Alicia Mary Smith (CC0) via Unsplash.

About the author

K Michael Hay­wood is Pro­fess­or Emer­it­us, School of Hos­pit­al­ity, Food and Tour­ism at the Uni­ver­sity of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Prof Hay­wood has recently writ­ten an e‑book “Aston­ish, Smarter Tour­ism by Design”. Find Michael on Linked­In.