Reflections from 2025: A Year in Tourism Leadership and Learning

Setting the Tone: B Corp Certification

At the beginning of 2025, we marked a defining milestone. The Tourism Space™ became a Certified B Corporation™. While this status is a formal recognition, it also affirms something much deeper. From the outset, we have committed to doing business in a way that reflects our values: centring place, empowering people, and striving for better.

B Corp status asks tough questions of every part of your business. For us, it reaffirmed our belief that tourism is not just an economic driver, but a living system. A system that can nurture communities, support nature, and create enduring legacies. Certification is not a conclusion. It is a recommitment. A reminder that regenerative tourism is a long-term effort requiring honesty, reflection, and purpose.

Regenerative Tourism: Still Ahead of the Curve?

As regenerative tourism continues to surface in strategies and conversations, it is clear that we are still in the early phases of a broader shift. The scepticism is familiar, seen previously in the early days of sustainable tourism, but the momentum is undeniable.

Using the Diffusion of Innovation model, we explored how regenerative tourism is currently embraced by Innovators and Early Adopters. Widespread uptake is still ahead, but many of us can already feel that its time is coming. Like with sustainable tourism before it, we anticipate a tipping point when evidence, frameworks, and policy alignment all come together.

What matters now is supporting the Early Adopters. These are the ones quietly doing the work, often without fanfare or structural backing. They need connection, language that resonates with decision-makers, and tangible examples that show regenerative tourism is not only desirable but also viable.

EU Directives and the Sustainability Shift

The regulatory landscape also shifted meaningfully this year. Three key EU directives—the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, and the Green Claims Directive—are reshaping expectations around sustainability communication.

These rules mark a shift from voluntary action to enforceable accountability. They also create a ripple effect across the tourism value chain, even for small and micro businesses. Sustainability claims will now need to be verifiable. Certification schemes will need to step up or step aside. Public bodies will need to adjust procurement, funding, and reporting to align with new norms.

We are in a transition period where uncertainty is real. Yet this moment also offers opportunity. The call is not to fear compliance, but to see it as a framework for clarity, credibility, and long-term resilience. Tourism professionals, particularly in public roles, have a critical task: to stay informed, to support others in navigating ambiguity, and to uphold trust through honest communication.

Storytelling and Food Tourism: A Taste of Place

We also spent time this year reflecting on the role of food and drink in telling the story of place. Too often seen as separate from heritage or sustainability, food tourism is one of the most accessible and evocative ways for visitors to truly connect with a destination.

Food brings people together. It carries stories, seasons, and identities. It speaks all languages and offers a practical, joyful way to embody the values of regenerative and sustainable tourism. We do not need to label it as such for it to be so.

Whether it is the texture of local bread, the rhythm of a market, or the quiet pride of a producer, food tourism invites intimacy. For destination leaders, the role is to help surface these stories, particularly the ones taken for granted by those closest to them. Storytelling is the secret ingredient. Not marketing stories, but lived ones.

Hosting with Care: What Makes a Tourism Event Work

Many of our clients are tasked with delivering tourism events—summits, workshops, or seminars. Few are trained event managers. And yet, when it is your event, it matters. It is your name, your relationships, your credibility.

We shared practical advice on the invisible elements that make events feel professional. Things like strong moderation, clear signage, structured panels, and confident transitions may seem minor, but they are the glue that holds everything together. They do not get compliments when they are right, but they certainly get noticed when they are wrong.

Speakers and MCs, too, need support and clarity. Briefing them early, respecting their role, and giving them what they need to shine is a quiet act of leadership. It is about making space—literally and metaphorically—for people to bring their best.

Reimagining Tourism’s Purpose

Midway through the year, we turned toward a deeper provocation: What is the purpose of tourism today?

For us, the answer continues to root in place. In an era of transition, disruption, and ecological urgency, the idea that tourism should be extractive or volume-driven is simply outdated. Place offers an anchor. When we prioritise the well-being of places—both human and more-than-human—we create the conditions for tourism to support long-term flourishing.

This is the essence of The Place Paradigm™. It is a perspective that does not just tweak what we measure, but challenges what we value. Place is not a backdrop. It is a protagonist. As such, tourism should be in service of place, not the other way around.

Facilitating with Purpose

This year also allowed us to reflect on how we host and hold space in our training and consultancy work. Facilitation is not about leading from the front. It is about enabling others to find insight, clarity, and momentum. It requires deep listening, courage to hold silence, and skill to navigate group dynamics with care.

The real magic happens when people feel seen, when their contributions are valued, and when the space allows for vulnerability without fear. It is not always easy, but it is always worth it. The best facilitation is not flashy. It is steady, structured, and quietly transformational.

Holding the Line: Staying With the Work

As the year drew on, we acknowledged how demanding this work can be. Many of the public sector professionals we partner with are balancing competing expectations, political constraints, and significant workloads. And still, they show up.

This is not easy work. It requires nuance, patience, and a high tolerance for complexity. It requires faith in long-term outcomes when short-term metrics dominate. It asks for leadership that is generous, not performative.

We see you. We admire the quiet courage it takes to keep advocating for better, even when it feels slow, or even invisible. Our work this year reinforced our belief that change comes not from grand declarations, but from grounded, repeated effort—rooted in values and attuned to place.

Looking Ahead

If 2025 taught us anything, it is this: we are not at the end of a journey. We are at the midpoint of a transformation. The pieces are moving—policy, evidence, narrative, and mindset. What felt fringe a decade ago now feels inevitable. The shift toward regenerative, collaborative, and place-inspired tourism is happening.

What will matter most in the years ahead is how we steward that shift. How we support leaders at every level to hold the line, build the bridges, and navigate the unknown.

We will continue to hold our space in that effort, reflecting, facilitating, and walking alongside those leading this work in real places, with real people, doing real things.

Let us keep going. Gently, firmly, and together.