Tourism is entering a period of profound change, with intensifying climate impacts, growing visitor numbers and increasing strain on local communities. The challenge is no longer whether change is coming, it is whether the sector can adapt quickly enough to shape a better future. And for that to happen, collaboration between destinations and businesses is essential.
Tourism’s challenges cannot be solved in silos
The tourism sector has become highly effective at working together when it comes to driving demand. Airlines, tour operators, online travel agencies and hotel groups regularly work in partnership with destinations to attract visitors through marketing and promotion.
But when it comes to what happens once visitors arrive, that collaboration often falls away. Questions around visitor pressure, climate resilience, community wellbeing and local supply chains are left to be puzzled over separately by different organisations and different parts of the system. Yet, tourism companies share the same supply chains and rely on the same destination assets – beaches, wildlife, beautiful places, museums, history and culture, food and drink and more.
The pressure on these assets is growing from our changing climate and rising visitor numbers. Many destinations find themselves at the sharp end of climate risk, particularly coastal, island and winter tourism locations. At the same time, travel demand is projected to rise sharply. According to the latest IATA data on passengers carried, we’re going to see visitor numbers double over the next 20 years. Communities in many tourism hotspots are already increasingly pushing back against unmanaged growth and the negative impacts they experience. Travel patterns are also beginning to shift away from hot and crowded destinations.
A space for practical collaboration
It’s clear that the sector can’t address these challenges through isolated action or business-as-usual thinking. Tourism needs more intentional collaboration, focused on how tourism’s benefits are shared, how risks are addressed and how destinations remain viable places to live, work and visit.
Meaningful collaboration is difficult to do well and consistently. It will not happen spontaneously but requires intention and structure. Travel Forward is well placed to play that role – an independent non-profit, with a destination focus and over twenty years’ experience working with the industry. Our new, global community, Travel Forward Connect, offers the space and facilitation to make that collaboration a reality, bringing together destinations and tourism businesses committed to destination wellbeing.
Rather than being another online platform or discussion forum, we’ve designed Travel Forward Connect as a curated global community built around practical collaboration between destinations and tourism businesses. The aim is to create a space where organisations can learn from each other, access new insights and work together on real-world challenges affecting destinations. Importantly, we’re building the community around a shared principle: that destination wellbeing is a shared responsibility.
“The challenges facing tourism cannot be solved by destinations alone, nor by industry alone. We must face them together, and we must face them in the destination itself.
If we are serious about regeneration, environmental and social outcomes for our destinations, that can only happen through genuine collaboration on the ground, between those who manage destinations and those who bring the visitors.
That is precisely the value proposition, as we understand it, of Travel Forward Connect. It brings both communities into the same space, structured around shared responsibility and practical action. For us in the Canary Islands, this is not a nice to have. It is essential.”
José Juan Lorenzo Rodríguez, Managing Director of Turismo de Islas Canarias
Travel Forward Connect members receive access to online sessions, with experts and guest speakers, monthly updates, access to case studies, opportunities to shape pilot projects, connection with fellow members and more. We’re currently building the founding cohort of destinations and businesses for Travel Forward Connect, ahead of the community’s first convenings later this year.
Ultimately, it is about collaboration. None of us can solve these challenges alone, so TF Connect gives us a way to learn, contribute and play our part in building a sustainable travel industry for the future.”
Michelle Clarke Cowell, Associate Director Sustainability at Holiday Extras
Discover more about Travel Forward Connect and express your interest
