Summit Session: No Tourism Is An Island
Learn more about the importance of seeing the whole picture (The Future of Tourism’s #1 Guiding Principle) when it comes to recovery, creating our new normal, and unlocking new opportunities for tourism with Keynote speaker Jeremy Sampson.
Keynote
Jeremy Sampson - The Travel Foundation
Hosted by Kelly Galaski, Symphony Tourism Services Managing Director
Highlights
Jeremy had us think about what “better" means when we say "build back better" and what exactly we should be building back. Urging us to challenge our thinking about what we want the future to be and to be intentional about or success metrics. We can think about diversity, inclusion, resilience, climate action, putting communities first and focusing on net benefits, and why we want tourism, vs simply thinking in terms of growth.
Jeremy introduced the Future of Tourism Coalition, of which TOTA is a founding signatory.
Some key indicators that a new normal is building are the fact that collaboration among DMOs and their communities is happening more than ever, there is economic investment happening focused on these important regenerative issues, and additionally new controls on demand for those destinations facing overtourism in the past are being put into place.
He shares a new model of destination management that many leading destinations are striving for, as seen in the image here.
We were glad to hear also that TOTA is on the right track launching resident sentiment data collection to gauge happiness in the region as part of putting communities first and now will be working together with the Travel Foundation as well! Stay tuned for details on that new partnership.
