I'm once again at my home office window as I write this. The field outside is no longer the abundant wildflower meadow it was last month. The hay has been saved and so it's back to a bare, yellow stubble. Everything around it is lush though and the summertime is feeling and sounding good outside.
This is my quiet time of year work-wise - and there's space to fit in a few day trips and overnight breaks, which I love. July is also a time when I get to do a professional development retreat of my own so I'm looking forward to a trip Stateside this month! I'm a Californian by birth and so I'm looking forward to spending time with my lovely godmother, our next door neighbour of old.
I'm also loving the GAA season (my two homesides of Limerick and Clare clashing this weekend), the World Cup (who wouldn't want to be from Paraguay this week?!) and of course Wimbledon has me totally in my spectator element.
I'm writing about Tipping Points this month, following on from the theme of thresholds last month - all related to how tourism is having to reflect on its own assumptions and adapt accordingly. There's a handy Leadership Brief, The Number Value Matrix, helping plot place value and number value together (we normally plot money value and number value so it's a bit of a different take)
Have a read and see what you think. Do send it on if you feel it may be useful to someone you know, and don't forget to email me directly if it resonates - I love to know how the monthly article lands in the real world beyond my window.
Beir bua
The phrase “tipping point” is almost impossible to use now without thinking of Malcolm Gladwell.
He didn’t invent the term, of course, though he certainly made it part of popular language. He used it to describe the moment when an idea, behaviour or pattern gathers enough force to shift from one state to another - an idea gains traction and something that was once marginal becomes part of the mainstream.
I’ve been wondering whether tourism itself is now approaching that kind of tipping point. For a long time, it felt almost impossible to credibly question the idea that more visitors meant more value. More arrivals, more spend, more growth, more benefit, more success - that's the simple and effective model that the industry has thrived on.
Nowadays, that assumption is a little less certain. Evidence from a growing number of places is giving rise to the question: after a certain point, can more visitors mean less value for the place?
That is the tipping point I explore in this month’s article.
