Sustainable Tourism Insights

Resources to make tourism more sustainable by default.

This is a resource page for sustainable tourism insights aimed at providing practical sustainable tourism tools, ideas and solutions for international development projects, destinations and travel companies. These can be applied whether your organization is already engaged in sustainable tourism and want to integrate sustainability even more into your operations, products or marketing. Or, whether you are just starting on your sustainability journey and don't know where to begin.

As sustainable tourism practitioners and consultants working in destination strategies, tourism product development, marketing and sustainability communications, we've seen the spectrum of sustainable tourism activities. Some that work well, and some that just don't.

In our articles and case studies we want to bring you best practices of sustainable tourism so you know how to integrate sustainability more into your tourism products, operations and destinations.

What is sustainable tourism?

It's important to remember that sustainable tourism goes beyond environmental protection and reducing one's carbon footprint. It includes the following three pillars, which all work together for sustainable development:

  • Reducing environmental footprint and conservation of biodiversity.
  • Socio-economic benefits in the community through increased local employment, fair wages, and small business growth.
  • Preservation of local cultures and cross-cultural understanding.

And, here’s another thing about sustainable tourism: it often creates deeper and more immersive travel experiences, thereby providing strong differentiation and USP for your tourism products and destinations.

Sustainable tourism development in action

Sustainable tourism development focuses on tourism development that benefits the local socio-economy, preserves local culture and optimizes use of resources to reduce environmental pressure. It also ensures that local people and public-private stakeholders are involved in the process and take ownership for local tourism development. What does this look like in practice? Here is a selection of sustainable tourism models and case studies from our projects around the world.

Interested in learning more about sustainable tourism development or how to enhance the sustainability in your tourism products or destination? Check out our different services and advisory and get in touch with how we might be able to help.