We all have the opportunity to lead real change

In tourism, we are in the education industry and we can be an incredible force for good!

I’m so happy to share what I valued about Australian Regional Tourism Convention with those who couldn’t attend.

There was a lot! So I’m focusing on what resonated with me most: sustainable destination management.

What’s one thing you could take away from the time you invest in reading this to make your destination a better place?

Some whys – why is sustainability important for destination managers?

The economy’s impact on regional tourism

Unfortunately, consumer and business sentiment and business confidence are not doing well. Standard of living has decreased  – and this is going to continue. Real wages are going down, while prices went up a lot, and they won’t be going back down.

Risk

The pace of risk is increasing as climate change rapidly intensifies. Regional tourism is facing increasingly complex and interrelated challenges. Frequent small claims are driving insurance costs up.

Policy to protect us and to enable prosperity isn’t keeping up because the changes are so fast.

Being able to get back up and pivot when inevitably knocked down (resilience) is more important than being able to withstand impacts (robustness).

Tourism is under-delivering on what host communities care about

There are many invisible benefits for regional communities from tourism – they are invisible because we don’t track them.

Examples of desirable benefits include community connection and wellbeing, and protection of natural places that we love to be in.

In addition to not measuring and tracking benefits, most destination managers also aren’t setting goals around building social and environmental benefits from tourism for the host community. So we’re also not planning tourism projects that will deliver more such benefits.

State and federal funding programs are not aiming to grow these either. In fact, most funding models aim to deliver volume (increased numbers of visitors) which can be detrimental to a host community.

Because we aren’t measuring non-economic impacts of tourism we also don’t know if (or how) tourism is negatively degrading community wellbeing or the local environment.

Wrong or unbalanced measures result in wrong or unbalanced outcomes. As destination managers we can hit our targets but fail to achieve our purpose, and under-deliver on what our community cares about.

What you measure determines where your energy goes – your goals, your budget, your time and your human resources. Quantitative measures should be balanced with qualitative, and circular measures should be established to enable regeneration to be measured

Case study: The unintended consequence of attracting sports events

A tourism strategy developed for Queensland’s Gold Coast recommended attracting sports events, but the impact was a lack of capacity in sports facilities for community sports and youth sport development! The community was a victim of the strategy’s success.

We need to plan for, and track, unintended consequences.

Case studies: What to measure

Tourism Midwest Victoria’s Destination Management Plan provides examples of measures for tourism development beyond economic benefits:

Solutions

Having identified a few of the challenges facing us, how can we to use tourism to build more resilient communities?

Regional Australia is highly impacted by climate change, from livelihoods to infrastructure, and tourism is a major emitter of climate pollution. We have to make every trip accountable and worth its impact.

Some recent state and national tourism strategies have developed frameworks around the idea of tourism as a force for good, redefining what success for tourism is as how tourism can strengthen a community, a place, and a local culture.

Sustainable travel is already the new normal – it’s not coming in the future. The values of travellers are changing. If you aren’t a part of a sustainable supply chain, your business will be impacted.

Actionable takeaways that will support your destination

What is one shift you could do in to advance the long term health of your destination?

Ways you can grow your impact:

• Learn from those who are already practicing regenerative tourism – read their strategies; call them up.
  Tilma is currently taking the time to speak with managers of ECO Destinations and members of Destination Think’s Collective, and we’re keen to share our learnings in the future. If you manage a sustainably-focused destination, please reach out to us! We’d love to learn from you - what is working, where are your barriers?

• Change what you measure – what would you love tourism to deliver for your community? Recalibrate success from volume to destination health.

Case study: Tourism leakage

Ryley from Port Hedland, WA, highlighted tourism income leakage, such as what visitors spend in tourism businesses that are owned by multinational corporations where the profit leaves the local economy to overseas shareholders and absent wealthy business owners.

 “What if we measure the money we get to keep, rather than the money we make?”

• Where is value being extracted from your region?

• Where can you create linkages between tourism businesses and other locally-owned businesses so more visitor expenditure stays in the local economy?

• Lead and inspire your local tourism industry and your community with a positive vision of your community’s future, using a positive impact mindset. Case studies of businesses that have become more sustainable and of sustainable projects can help inspire others.

• Set ambitious goals, and enable community to have a voice when making decisions about desired outcomes. Then enable visitors, businesses and community to contribute to that ambition.

• Test and trial. Failure is where a breakthrough can happen!

• Use the tool of “win-win-win or no deal” – if something isn’t a win for the community and the local culture, the environment and the climate, and the local economy, then no deal. If something gets trashed, you’ve cooked the golden goose that attracts visitors.
  Examples of win-win-win outcomes include improved staff retention, more community support, and increasing profits by reducing costs, such as by reducing waste. Be the voice for nature and wildlife at the table – they are part of your community but are voiceless unless you speak up for them.

• Advocate for public and active transport infrastructure. Public transport is so important for travellers who don’t want to rent a car, and connectivity in regions is pretty awful. Talk about measuring what matters: there is no data on how much is being invested into infrastructure for transporting people (but there is for freight)! Investment is neglecting intermodal transport (e.g. connecting planes to trains and buses). Good regional public transport would support domestic day and weekend trips, and visits to regions by internationals.

• Set up systems to reward triple bottom line benefits (or quadruple bottom line, which means including considering benefits for visitors.)

Make it easy for your region’s operators to ‘do good’

After all, they’re the ones on the front lines able to engage visitors.

• Firstly identify (audit) where operators in your destination are already ‘doing good’, such as composting, using renewable energy, buying from local suppliers, and so on. This will enable you to share positive local stories.

Queenstown

• Make the ROI on investing time or money on sustainability for a business really clear – where can a business owner find value for the time taken out of their business? Is it in relieving a pain point or in saving money?

• In addition to sharing the why, share the how, such as by sharing existing resources like Austrade’s Sustainable Tourism Toolkit which makes the ‘how’ clear for operators.

• Subsidise to reduce cost hesitation (e.g. the cost of measuring emissions, or of sustainability benchmarking).

• Embed impact and accountability, such as by requiring evidence of improving sustainability as a condition for being eligible for grant funding.

• Work with the horses that you can lead to water. Know and elevate local sustainability leaders (and challenge them to go further).Double down and celebrate your local sustainability leaders, because other business owners will be receptive to learning from peers’ successes.

• Facilitate networking to share solutions and collaboration, where businesses can learn from each other. We’re on a journey – to go far, we need to go together. We all need a sense of belonging – connection to other people and Country is really important for humans. Help create that sense of belonging in your local tourism industry.

• Young people and First Nations people are more interested in developing social enterprises than businesses – they are very connected to what is happening to the planet and their communities. Help make that opportunity more visible to them.

Make it easy for your visitors to ‘do good’

• Be clear about who you want to attract. Who comes to your region matters. Who would you like at your dinner table? Not someone who will trash your place!

Case study: High contributing visitors

Queenstown is trying to attract (and is measuring) high-contributing (not just high-spend) visitors who

• Stay for 10 days or more

• Are connected and involved (rather than extractive consumers), and act like temporary locals

• Interested in why they should do something rather than what they can do.

• Engage in slow travel.

 Queenstown doesn’t try to deter who they don’t want; they just don’t try to be everything for everyone. “This is who we are and if you are attracted to it, you’ll come.”

When you aren’t trying to appeal to everyone, you get cut through to those you do want to come.

• Then mobilise your visitors - enable them to have a positive impact by default, such as by developing only sustainable tourism infrastructure, such as renewable-energy-powered event venues well serviced by public transport and safe, comfortable active transport routes. 

Regeneration doesn’t motivate people to travel to a destination. Travellers aren’t thinking, “A carbon offset will give me the holiday reset I need.” So we need to do regeneration by stealth by making regeneration business as usual.

For example, when visitors stay longer, they have a better experience – they start to slow down by Day 4 of their holiday – and fewer visitors who stay longer = fewer emissions from flights and other transport to the destination.

Queenstown is using packages and deals to enable visitors to book based on the destination’s regenerative values.

Queenstown’s guests can easily search for and see the good operators are doing, such as being locally owned, or contributing to making Queenstown a better place via the Love Queenstown fund for environmental regeneration.

• Create impact at scale – How can you engage visitors at all touchpoints to have positive impact so they return home inspired to do more?

• Tourists visit your destination to experience its unique qualities, so help visitors easily find where local produce is on the menu, where they can learn about local Aboriginal culture, how they can spend time with a local farmer…

Next steps

What could be the biggest lever you could pull to maximise impact?

What about the biggest lever you could pull this month?

• ART is developing a set of social values for measuring tourism outcomes, and a specific tool to make them useable.

• Plan to attend Ecotourism Australia’s Global Sustainable Tourism Conference next June for further learnings – we’ll be there!

• See the presentation slides for presentations on these and other topics in ART’s free Regional Tourism Hub.

• Read a (great!) summary of learnings from each presentation at Convention by Yvette at Destination Riverina Murray.

Credit: ART

Two of my favourite presentations were by David from DataStory who works with Destination Queenstown, and Paige from Tourism Collective which is developing destination stewardship plans for each region in South Australia to deliver on the state’s Tourism For Good intent.

• Watch David’s webinar for Australian Regional Tourism on regenerative tourism now.

• Stay tuned for Paige’s upcoming webinar for Australian Regional Tourism on enabling  visitors to have a positive impact by default – join ART’s free Regional Tourism Hub to be notified when it’s on.

Over to you

Whose story has inspired you lately – a destination or an operator?

What sustainability resource or tip would you recommend to others?

Thank you to all the presenters I learned from whose ideas are compiled here.