5 Signs That Tourism Metrics No Longer Match the Destination Mandate
On holding growth and stewardship at the same time — and why that is harder than it sounds
Something has been coming up consistently in the leadership conversations I've been part of lately, and I feel it's worth naming.
Economic contribution, employment and visitor growth remain central to what tourism delivers and why it is supported by governments and local authorities. And yet, outside of the big picture policy document and the once-a-year industry presentation, day to day conversations are much more granular (not surprising, for sure).
I'm hearing a lot about how to talk about and measure things like resilience, legacy and whether tourism is genuinely strengthening the places it depends on.
What strikes me is that tourism leaders don't get to choose between these concerns. They have to hold them all at once, sometimes in the same meeting and even in the same breath. There seems to be a growing gap between a model that was designed for one set of priorities and a brief that now carries considerably more. While growth and stewardship can and do align, they are also, at times, pulling in different directions.
Here are five signs that the model has not yet caught up with the mandate.
1. The metrics no longer tell the whole story
In almost every strategy review process I’ve facilitated or observed in the past year, the familiar KPIs are present and dominant: visitor numbers, visitor spend, length of stay. They tell the indispensable story of tourism’s economic contribution.
Alongside that story, accountability has expanded into areas such as environmental integrity, community legitimacy, housing pressure, cultural continuity, biodiversity commitments. They are live expectations colliding and coalescing in the same conversation that holds the economic expectations. Sometimes they align and sometimes they seem to be pulling in opposite directions.
Leaders are holding both sets of responsibilities at once – in the same policy cycle and in the same conversations. When you are responsible for all of these outcomes and still assessed primarily on the economic ones alone, you find yourself in a structural mismatch. The economic definitions and measures of success are no longer sufficient on their own.
2. Tourism is being named a means to an end, not the end in itself
One programme we are involved in right now is interesting. In terms of content, it’s all about experience development, routes to market, collaboration, commercialisation. In terms of purpose, it’s all about regeneration and long-term vitality of the destination. Explicit conversations within the group relate to how growth in the quality and consistency of visitor numbers can strengthen community confidence, activate local pride, and build economic resilience in a changing rural landscape. Visitor numbers are a central part of the story and still only a part of the story.
Another programme, with a different regenerative purpose in mind, shapes up similarly. Tourism is talked about simultaneously in terms of growing visitors numbers and in those numbers contributing to language, identity and intergenerational continuity.
It’s no longer an ‘either/or’ conversation : either economic growth or regenerative outcomes.
It’s a very integrated approach : economic growth, professional approach to sales and marketing and delivery of regenerative outcomes for place and community.
This expansion of tourism into wider place outcomes also expands the key leadership question. We continue to ask ‘how can we grow?’ and supplement it with ‘how can we ensure that growth delivers on our long-term aspirations for our place?’
Both questions are live at the same time and they reframe what good leadership in this place looks like.
3. The formal version of the work versus the fuller version of the work
Leaders describe political pressure for visible, quantifiable results alongside community sensitivity around congestion and liveability. They describe funding applications that still only require economic projections even when the objective also includes resilience and long-term place health. They describe a kind of professional double accounting - the formal version of the work, and the fuller version they are actually doing.
Growth metrics have decades of infrastructure behind them in the form of methodologies, benchmarks, political familiarity. Stewardship metrics are still being developed and still finding their footing. Leaders working across both are doing so with well-established tools on one side and improvised ones on the other. It’s a structural asymmetry.
4. The remit now crosses sectors
The earlier model allowed tourism to operate with a relatively clear and contained remit: campaigns, promotion, experience development, clustering. The expanded mandate intersects with housing, transport, energy, biodiversity, community development, and rural policy.
Tourism cannot deliver these outcomes alone. Other sectors cannot deliver them without tourism. Collaboration is no longer optional. Even consultation is insufficient. The trajectory is towards coalition as the work and the accountability move into shared responsibility across systems and sectors.
Your role may now require continuous cross-sector alignment rather than single-agency delivery. This is very challenging when the models and metrics were built for singular approaches.
5. Navigation and judgement become core leadership skills
This may be the clearest signal of all. If you find yourself regularly weighing economic opportunity against ecological sensitivity, visitor experience against resident tolerance, or short-term performance against long-term credibility, you are already navigating. In each case, both things are important and both are pulling at once. There is no single metric that resolves those tensions cleanly, and that is unlikely to change.
This complexity the skill of navigating is actually the work of the moment. Leadership is about exercising professional judgement in messy, visible trade-off situations. (have a look at my October 2025 article about Strategic Stewardship and The Navigator Leader if you want to delve into that a little more Strategic Stewardship: A New North Star for Destination Leaders)
Holding both
The growth-driven model has delivered extraordinary value, professionalised destination leadership, and given leaders a language and a set of tools that worked well for the world they were designed for.
That world has grown more complex in recent years. Stewardship, legitimacy, resilience and long-term place vitality are now embedded in the brief alongside economic delivery, and leaders are being asked to carry all of it at once.
The infinity loop is a useful image for the kind of leadership this asks for. Unlike a balance, the loop is a continuous, fluid movement where both things are always present and always in play. Neither is ever fully left behind; neither is ever fully arrived at. The work lives in that ongoing movement, navigated with judgement and care each time.
Many leaders are feeling a stretch from holding a brief the system around them hasn't fully caught up with yet.
For many leaders it is a signal that the success model guiding daily decisions has not yet been updated to reflect the full weight of what the brief now contains. If tourism is increasingly in service of strengthening place over time, the way we define, measure and talk about success will gradually need to reflect that.
If any of this is showing up in your work, I'd love to hear about it. Drop me a line at [email protected].
