05 Oct More How, Less What

Over the years there have been many discussions about what constitutes sustainable tourism. There is no doubt that these are important conversations, and yet, I am amazed at how little time we spend on addressing how to implement sustainable tourism in businesses and destination communities.

Introducing sustainability in tourism requires a wide range of skills. The following list is far from comprehensive but gives a flavor of knowledge and abilities required by sustainable tourism practitioners.

• Change management skills
• Internal and external communication skills
• Strategic planning
• Ability to execute tactical actions
• commitment to performance management and continuous improvement
• Collaboration and coalition building
• Cooperation and team development
• Systems thinking
• Tenacity and persistence

And, of course, there are many more skills that effective tourism change-makers need to achieve their goals. The time has come to spend more time on building our collective capacity to achieve the promise of sustainable tourism.

In the meantime, shout out to all the sustainable tourism champions who apply these skills, day in and day out, to make tourism – and the world – better.