What is Regenerative Tourism?
“It is an emerging, evolving and dynamic understanding that includes sustainability within the framework of living systems and emphasises the relationship of the human to themselves, to the other and to earth; where the other is invited to visit the place, slowing down the pace of the visitor and creating an experience that activates deep and positive connections between the visitor, the local community (the other), the place and the systems that sustain life there, aligning both the local and the visitor to nature's own pace. Regenerative tourism should prioritise the integration of all stakeholders in its design, to support the co-created purpose of the destination, co-evolutionary partnerships with nature and systems thinking, and thus build the capacity of socio-environmental systems for long-term healthy growth and mutually beneficial interactions”.
Teruel & Briceño, 2018
Challenging some misconceptions about Regenerative Tourism
What is NOT Regenerative Tourism?
- A new word for sustainable tourism.
- Just another type of tourism, like ecotourism.
- A buzzword.
- Simply the visitor leaving the place better than they found it.
- Keeping our planet the way it is today, maintaining our status quo.
- Just adding restoration or carbon offset activities.
- A set of fixed objectives to be reached, or a model that contains a series of quick fixes.
- A top-down framework, with a series of standardised practices.
- Something that separates nature from humans, for fear they will harm it.
What is Regenerative tourism?
- It comes from ancestral wisdom and the laws of nature.
- A paradigm: regenerative tourism comes from regenerative development and design.
- The tourism activity supports the social and environmental systems of place, harnessing their potential to regenerate.
- A movement that questions our status quo and motivates us to ask questions.
- Something that comes from the community, a design which is co-created with them, according to place.
- It puts nature at the heart of the design.
“Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.”
―
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Why regeneration?
The world:
- Most developed countries exceeded their biocapacity more than half a century ago, and now have to consume resources imported from elsewhere.
- We have exceeded planetary limits: what is consumed in one year, it takes the earth 18 months to regenerate (Global Footprint Network).
- The IPCC 2022 report has warned that the world temperature will increase by 1.5°C in the next two decades.
- We are already seeing an increase in natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes and other phenomena, which has tripled in the last 30 years.
- Biodiversity has declined at an alarming rate in recent years, largely as a result of human activity.
Us:
- Crisis of values: we put money, rather than life, at the centre of everything we do, out of fear of scarcity.
- The relationships between humans, and between humans and nature, are deteriorating.
- We have great inequality in the world.
- Our mental health has dramatically worsened.
- We feel more alone despite being more connected than ever before.
- We often feel a lack of purpose or clarity about what we want to do in our life.
Tourism organisations:
- Processes and protocols have been tightened, leaving no room for creativity.
- Fear of being copied, and the battle for market share, has made the industry more and more insular.
- We prioritise profit over socio-environmental wellbeing.
- Incremental staff sick leave and turnover result in high costs.
- Increasingly unmotivated and dissatisfied staff.
- Communication and understanding with our local partners and customers is often a major challenge.
"Change before you have to."
Jack Welch
How do we create change at The RegenLab?
We design tailor-made workshops and programmes focused on different aspects of regeneration and different audiences: from entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs or organisations that want to start transitioning towards regeneration, to experience design for tour operators and guides, regenerative design for companies, or implementation of regeneration principles for destination managers.
Through seminars, talks, participation in round tables or conferences, we generate important conversations in which we provoke unlearning, questioning beliefs, innovation, generation of knowledge, and deep thinking. These conversations plant the seeds of change in an organisation or destination that wants to know what regenerative tourism is all about or to start the journey towards regeneration.
We accompany processes of discovering individual and common purpose, reinforcing identity, transforming old leadership models, building collaborative bonds, empowering communities, building team and community participation, creating effective communication systems, applying the living organisation model and, of course, co-designing regenerative experiences that honour the place and its inhabitants.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Gandhi
Do you want to know how we can help your organisation?
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