Tourism’s thriveability requires performative change: The changemakers
If we were to boost tourism destinations’ capacity to thrive, who are the likely changemakers? And what actions might they take? K Michael Haywood offers answers in this “Good Tourism” Insight.
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In the first part of this article, “Tourism’s thriveability requires performative change: The foundations”, I laid out some basic requirements for communities-as-destinations to thrive.
However, there is a need for changemakers — tourism leaders, destination management and marketing organisations (DMOs), and educators — to contextualise the details, start doing, and be held accountable.
Thriveability requires the orchestration of transformative change.
Tourism leaders
Post-COVID, the push for reviving travel and tourism represents a flurry of activity as everyone struggles to reach and exceed pre-pandemic volumes. However, the trajectory and transition toward thriveability, from mediocrity to magnificence, demands changes in how business is done and the type of value created.
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“Travel & tourism industry policy and governance”
Leaders from all walks of life now have to re-think their responsibilities to communities-as-destinations, even to their own enterprises. To do so they must:
- Acknowledge, visualise, and act as if their organisations, enterprises, and communities are living systems affecting living systems;
- Adopt “longpath” mindsets in pursuit of egalitarian futures;
- Prioritise more life-affirming value creation in pursuit of magnificence and meaningfulness that requires generating net-positive value;
- Legitimise tourism’s social licence and the contractual obligations of organisations by honouring all covenantal relationships with stakeholders, thereby ensuring healthy economies;
- Develop healthier work and community environments;
- Revise outmoded human resource (talent) management practices and jettison the notion of hiring “the handy, cheap and willing”;
- Align workers with purpose and create the opportunities that will allow people to pursue and realise their own sense of purpose; and
- Commit to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The leadership challenges and imperatives of our time are immense. People have to be brought together. Forward progress has to be energised. Tourism and communities-as-destinations must be reimagined.
Destination management and marketing organisations
Thriveability might never have been an initial intent, but Destinations International’s promotion of Community Shared Value could be conceived as a prerequisite for DMOs becoming recognised as the guardians of their communities-as-destinations.
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It augurs well, so long as DMOs adopt an evolutionary change of mandate from marketing to management. But … continue reading Prof Haywood’s “GT” Insight in full & for free at The “Good Tourism” Blog.
