This summer, an article from a well-known Irish sports commentator resonated deeply. He created a direct link between the future prospects of his local sporting club with how tourism is managed in the area in the future. His place is located on the Wild Atlantic Way, allowing him to highlight that marketing success does not necessarily translate into community vitality (check out my LinkedIn post on it here with the text of the article in the comments).
Until recent years, community wellbeing and place vitality were not the remit of public sector tourism leaders. Tourism policy focused on driving visitor growth, based on the assumption of continuous growth of capitalism, that benefits would naturally follow. Experience, however, has shown that the reality is far more complex. The positive impacts of tourism aren't always felt in the places where tourism takes place. As we've seen, some of our most visited destinations are raising red flags about the health and vitality of their places.
It seems that there's a genuine shift is underway. Destination leadership is increasingly coming to include actively caring for both people and places, not just attracting and welcoming visitors. In fact, the latter is increasingly articulated as being in service of the former.
Place vitality - how well a place has the capacity to support those who live, work, and build community there over the longer term - is gradually becoming a Key Performance Indicator, re-shaping the future of tourism leadership.
More thoughts on what this means in this month's article, and we also have a Place Vitality Scorecard that offers some thoughts on how to work with this new KPI.
Beir bua
