HOW DESTINATION MANAGERS CAN GUIDE TOURISM FOR SUSTAINABLE LOCAL BENEFIT
By Kushla Gale & Nic Cooper
Tourism is changing. Travellers are seeking out experiences that delight them and leave a positive benefit for the local environment and the host community. 1
In this article, two tourism consultants outline how, and why, destination managers can turn this growing change into opportunity. Destination managers can be powerful drivers of opportunity as sustainability reshapes what makes destinations viable and competitive.
WHAT DOES SUSTAINABLE MEAN?‘ Sustainable’ is often defined as meeting the needs of people today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. 2
This article explores:
1. How to leverage your influence: How destination managers can drive systemic sustainability improvements.
2. How to align impact with strategy: How sustainability and transformational tourism experiences can strengthen business, community, and destination benefits.
3. How to empower businesses for impact: How to support micro and small tourism operators to reduce emissions while enhancing profitability, the visitor experience, and local benefit.
WHY SHOULD DESTINATION MANAGERS CARE ABOUT SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL BENEFIT FROM TOURISM; NOT ONLY ECONOMIC BENEFIT? Even if sustainability isn’ t a focus of your destination management yet, it’ s rapidly becoming a key factor in destination competitiveness, and destination managers can use it to attract visitors, investment, and deliver better outcomes for residents.
Because tourism is impacted by social license: travellers and host communities care about social benefits from tourism Sustainability is important for more than 4 out of 5 travellers. 3 More than half( 53 %) are aware of the impact of tourism on host communities and the environment, and more than two-thirds( 69 %) want to leave the places they visit better than when they arrived.
While more than half of locals( 57 %) are positive about tourism’ s impacts on where they live, common issues caused by tourism for residents include traffic congestion, littering, overcrowding, and more expensive living costs( such as when housing is repurposed for visitor accommodation).
Because tourism is impacted by the quality of the natural environment Tourism is dependent on unharmed nature. Over half of travel demand is driven by a desire to experience nature, and over 80 % of the tourism industry’ s goods and services are highly dependent on nature. 4
Tourism is also very vulnerable to disaster impacts: by( ever-intensifying) extreme weather events, and when their impacts are made worse by poor environmental management, such as when landslides and soil loss is caused by heavier rain dumps combined with land clearing.
For destinations to continue to be enjoyed by both visitors and locals, destination management needs to enable the good intentions that travellers have. Host communities want to see investment in
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