Without one you don’t know where your tourism is going or why
It’s all well and good to start any tourism initiative with the idea that you want to get more tourists/visitors and its as simple as that.
Beware what you dream of – your dream may come true!
The fact is that sustainable tourism development is rather more nuanced, AND rather more powerful – so, at the very start you need to begin your sustainable tourism journey with a very powerful vision.
After all, you want your vision, and its achievement, to be a fulfilling journey – you want the activities to be rewarding for all involved rather than just the achievement of a mundane result.
Moreover, it is important to examine the potential result for flaws. You wouldn’t want to end up with a result that was unsatisfactory or unfulfilling after all that commitment and hard work, would you?
You don’t think that a formal vision is a good idea? Check these out:
Psychology Today
The power of Vision
Before you start remember, the idea is not just success but sustainable success so there are certain pointers that should be taken into consideration:
A sustainable tourism vision must impact (as tourism does) on economic, social, cultural and environmental issues and therefore this should be taken into consideration at the very beginning.
Sustainable tourism is endogenous not hierarchical – and therefore your vision should come from your group and not be imposed on it from outside.
The power of your vision in practice will be achieved by the number of people who have an investment of both goodwill and aspiration in it, and who truly want it to succeed. It is critically important that your vision incorporates elements of each and every stakeholder community and individual voice, hope and dream.
How to do it? Here is a pretty simple list of stages that may help:
- Tourism inventory (the plusses AND the minuses)
- The outside world (what does the market really need?)
- Needs assessment – what everyone wants (what does your community need?)
- Create a vision that would fufil those needs
- Key skills – to manage the result (identify the skills you want to learn)
- Working groups (create friendly working groups)
- Timescale
- Finances
- MRV (Monitoring, Reporting, Verification)
- Keep communicating successes and failures
EXCERPTED FROM THE SUSTAINABLE TOURISM MARKETING GUIDE – special pre-publication offer HERE
¨Valere Tjolle
