Why sustainable destinations are at the core of the SDGs

The travel industry itself has had an unprecedented journey in the last decades. From the 1970s to 2019, international travelers grew from 200 million to 1.6 billion. As a result, many places struggled with ‘overtourism’. Other places struggled to attract tourism and capture that capital for local conservation and local communities. Then in 2020, due to the global COVID-19 pandemic, tourism globally came to an unprecedented stop. Out of necessity, many places were enjoyed by locals who wanted to get out of their homes and explore. Almost all places hit very difficult financial times.

As we are still recovering from this unprecedented global shock to the travel industry, there is no better time for destinations to take an inventory of their assets and make plans to restore and manage places for the long run. In coming months, the World Economic Forum's Global Future Council on Sustainable Tourism will focus on 10 principles that we hope will help guide positive planning and behavior change for destinations to restore themselves and operate to optimize their full offerings. The combination of the 10 principles will help destinations achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

Destinations are the “Nuclei” of Tourism - the landing place supplied by a place for the traveler to experience and consume. According to the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), “the main destination of a tourism trip is defined as the place visited that is central to the decision to take the trip” and is closely associated with the purpose of the trip. Therefore, destination management has a great effect on forms of tourism, tourism demand, and its impact. Otherwise, it may lead to great disappointment and not be worth the traveler’s journey or future investment. Sustainable management of destinations is at the core of a sustainable future of the sector and is the responsibility of the place. Traditionally, places spend far more on destination marketing than destination management.

Destinations draw on a bundle of resources and assets like nature, culture, existing capital and infrastructure to attract travelers yet often don’t reinvestment back into those assets as part of the overall business model for a destination. If not managed well, those assets can be overexploited and destroyed. Destinations, therefore, have to be managed and developed sustainably. Different actors participate, knowingly and often unknowingly, positively and negatively, in shaping the destinations’ development path through their decisions and behavior. Destination development impacts the social, natural, and economic environment. Consequently, multilayer network analysis is commonly used to analyze the dynamics of destination development and management.

All destinations are managed – implicitly and explicitly. There often is a decentralized non-coordinated approach when actors like tourists demand activities of independent companies, which offer services without considering positive or negative externalities on the destination – the proverbial ‘tail wagging the dog’. Ideally there is explicit management involving an inclusive destination development plan with purpose, vision, and strategy - with coordinated mechanisms that align the behavior of actors, control the use of resources and coordinate the visitor flow and experience.

Management of the multilayer destination network requires, like any complex system, a flexible and complex management and control system. From a Sustainable Destination perspective, we have developed 10 principles below with the UN Sustainable Development Goals in mind, to help guide positive planning and behavior change for destinations to optimize their full offerings in perpetuity. The 10 principles are:

Done well, destination management not only protects a place but the businesses that rely on the travel industry. Done poorly, eroding a place erodes business and everyone’s experience. The pre pandemic global travel boom until 2019 clearly showed the challenges of insufficient destination management, with consequences like ‘overtourism’. Results of poor destination management can include: overexploitation of cultural and natural resources; negative economic impacts on communities; overuse of infrastructure leading to dangerous local conditions; lack of connecting visitor revenue with local communities for long term job creation and sustainable livelihoods; backlash and anger where resources are skewed towards visitors versus locals; lack of control as local communities bear the costs for not being included in destination design and management.

Now. The uncertainties of the pandemic through 2021 and 2022 give destinations a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reset their trajectory for a sustainable future. This pause in ‘business as usual’ before COVID-19 allows destinations some time to do the inclusive conceptual work, allocate resources, and adjust business models before travelers return in full. This time will pass.

There are technical resources available to help with this transition, including members of the Forum’s Global Future Council for Sustainable Destinations and other groups. There are also financial resources such as from the European Union, the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development as well as sustainable infrastructure spending that can support current destination work.