It isn’t uncommon for tourism policies and plans to be made without community input, but tourism does not exist in a vacuum. Communities feel the consequences of being excluded: from overtourism and climate and biodiversity threats to cultural heritage loss and widening social inequities. To build a more sustainable and responsible future for tourism – for destination communities, businesses, and tourists alike – we need a more holistic approach, one that puts communities at the center of tourism planning and decision-making.
Without doing so we risk losing what makes so many destinations unique and worth visiting.
Destination Stewardship – a model that uses a multistakeholder approach to maintaining the cultural, environmental, economic, and aesthetic integrity of their country, region, or town – puts communities in the driver seat. More importantly, this process allows for historically excluded communities to have not only a say in the planning process but also to take a participatory role in the management process.
Through a multi-disciplinary approach, CREST analyzes the complex context of local tourism ecosystems to execute projects that are both technical and holistic. Whether it’s sustainable tourism master planning, capacity-building, tourism visioning, marketing and branding, workshops and training with local stakeholders, and much more, we apply decades of rigorous data and case study collection from around the globe to implement best practices in our destination work.