Regenerative tourism: not a silver bullet
At almost every tourism conference in the past years, the same word came up. Regenerative. The new sustainable. The new responsible. The new slow travel. And like its predecessors, it promises more than it can deliver.
This article asks the question the industry keeps avoiding: is regenerative tourism the path we all need to go down, or does the label do more harm than good?
The word that promises everything
Regenerative tourism promises that a visitor leaves a place better than it found it. That sounds appealing. More than appealing: it sounds like the solution the industry has been waiting for. The presentations have been made. The reports have been written. The conference sessions are packed.
The concept originates from regenerative agriculture, where it is concrete, measurable, and ecologically grounded. You can measure the soil. You can count biodiversity. You can demonstrate that a plot of land is richer after regenerative farming than before.
But what do you measure in regenerative tourism? Who verifies whether a destination or operator deserves the label? And how do you weigh the paddleboard cleanup against the flight the tourist took to get there? How does it scale?
Nobody measures it. And that, precisely, is what the academics behind the concept have warned about. Loretta Bellato and Anna Pollock write that marketing and PR have reduced it to slogans like “leaving a place better than it was found,” a framing they describe as “one-dimensional” and “superficial.” Not because the idea falls short, but because in practice it gets simplified into something it is not.
This hollowing out can cause real problems once organisations start a regenerative journey.
Too complicated and too simple at the same time
Regenerative tourism starts from a powerful idea: that the sector’s problems stem from an extractive worldview, and that tourism can contribute differently to nature, community, and economy. It calls for systems thinking. Seeing interconnection rather than isolated interventions.
But in practice, that idea is often translated into a hierarchy: from limiting harm, to becoming more sustainable, to restoration, and ultimately to regeneration. This implicitly establishes a standard. Regenerative becomes the end goal. Everything below it quickly comes to be seen as falling short. Sustainability isn’t good enough anymore.
This framing oversimplifies reality. What looks good on paper does not necessarily work better in practice. During the COVID period in Zanzibar, small, locally-owned accommodations had to shut down and could no longer pay their staff. A large international tour operator, by contrast, kept employees on the payroll throughout the pandemic. That does not fit the ideal picture. But it worked.
The deeper problem lies not in the idea itself, but in how these models get applied, often before anyone has asked whether they are appropriate. Not every destination faces the same problem. What counts as progress in one context can cause harm in another.
Regenerative tourism also makes execution unnecessarily complex. It leans heavily on abstract systems thinking and assigns tourism a role that is broader than most professionals can realistically fulfill. Because it is presented as the definitive standard, anything that falls short of it is made to feel inadequate. That is paralyzing. It fuels hesitation, encourages green hushing, and slows down the very progress it is trying to accelerate. It is a solution in search of a problem.
Meanwhile, the numbers
While the sector debates the regenerative frame, tourism emissions are growing at twice the rate of the broader global economy. A study in Nature Communications shows that tourism was responsible for 8.8% of global emissions between 2009 and 2019. Transport emissions from international tourism alone are projected to grow by 45% toward 2030.
No cleanup action, no local dinner, no voluntourism project compensates for that structural reality. Regenerative tourism, as it is currently deployed, barely touches it. It is a conversation about the colour of the curtains while the house is on fire.
These initiatives produce results. But they shift the conversation toward what is visible and marketable, while the most significant structural levers stay out of frame.
Bellato and Pollock call for a paradigm shift. But tourism is not a contained system. It intersects with economics, spatial planning, the environment, and social development simultaneously. A paradigm shift in tourism therefore requires a shift across all of those systems. That is not a sectoral transition. That is a civilizational one. It is an ambition. But it is not an answer to how we make better decisions tomorrow.
What already exists is being repackaged and sold
“Regenerative tourism began as a lens. A way of looking differently at value, systems, and impact. But as so often happens in this sector, where ideas are quickly translated into models that must be applicable everywhere regardless of context. It did not stop there. It became a method, a programme, a certification. And with that, a product.
An industry has grown around the concept. Training programmes, consulting engagements, conferences, certifications. That is not inherently wrong. It creates ideas, inspiration, language, attention, and sometimes financing and policy. But it also means that interests take shape. And interests shape what becomes visible and what does not.
At the same time, there are operators who have been working from principles now called “regenerative” for ten, twenty years. Community-based tourism. Local procurement. Low volume, high value. Direct relationships with the community. Authenticity as a starting point, not a marketing claim. Those people never needed the label. They were already doing it.
The Dutch platform Hide&B illustrates this clearly. They offer stays on regenerative farms, food forests, and family estates. The farming is genuinely regenerative: measurable, ecologically grounded, concrete. The tourism around it is a means to an end. Your stay helps the farmer invest in ecological restoration. Not as a label, but as a logic.
Take the village of Oosterend on the island of Terschelling. Gas-free for years. Operating from a centuries-old community model, with local operators certified through Waddengoud. Nobody there started with the ambition of being regenerative. They started with: this is our island, this is how we live, and this is how we want to welcome guests.
The same holds globally. The Māori in New Zealand have worked for centuries from the principle of Kaitiakitanga, stewardship and protection of land and nature, without it ever needing to be called a tourism concept. In 2017, Palau launched the Palau Pledge, a binding commitment to the island’s children that every visitor signs upon arrival. Ninety-six percent of visitors reported being more conscious of their impact. No regenerative label. Concrete results.
Costa Rica shows the other side of the coin. Decades of consistent environmental policy, reforestation that brought forest cover from 23% to 56%, and near-total transition to renewable energy. And yet: gentrification, displaced local residents, and an eco-label at risk of losing its meaning. There’s never a final destination. It is a continuous act of judgment.
That same work is being renamed, validated, and sold. Which raises an uncomfortable question: who actually needs the label?
Darrell Wade, founder of Intrepid Travel and arguably the person with the most moral standing in this debate, put it plainly: regenerative tourism “tends to focus on the small and positive rather than the large and negative.”
We celebrate the cleanup. We tell the story of the local producer. We show what is improving. But we avoid the conversation about the flight, about growth, about dependence on international mobility.
That is precisely where the risk lies. Not that regenerative tourism produces nothing. But that the conversation shifts toward what is visible and marketable, rather than what is structurally necessary.
So what instead?
This article is not an argument against the ambitions of regenerative tourism. The direction is right. The tools can be powerful. The debate is not about where we want to go. It is about how we get there.
A framework that begins with a paradigm shift asks something that most destinations, operators, and policymakers cannot deliver today. Not because they lack the will, but because reality is stubborn. Change often does not happen in one great leap. It happens in small steps, with people who can make a choice today, make an investment today, adjust a policy today. A framework that cannot connect with that reality is one that is practical, feasible and scalable.
Nobody in Oosterend said “we need to be regenerative.” They said: this is who we are, and this is how we live. The difference lies not in the name, but in the starting point.
Where regenerative tourism often begins with how the system should work, begin with how the system does work. With the place, the context, and the reality in which choices are made. Most travellers do not see themselves as stewards. They want to relax, eat well, and get away for a while. Most operators are trying to keep their business running, with enough revenue and as little uncertainty as possible. That is not a failing. That is the reality in which tourism exists. And strategy has to work there as well.
That also means we do not try to redefine the system from scratch in every situation. Not every destination has the space, the mandate, or the public support to carry out a fundamental redefinition of value. Not every administrator can defend a plan that begins with that kind of foundational shift. Asking for that creates distance. And without buy-in, little to nothing happens.
Rather than starting from an ideal, start from the place. What is at stake here? Where is the pressure? What is missing? And equally important: what is achievable? How far can we go, and how quickly? These are not abstract questions. They are choices that directly affect policy, investment, and execution.
That approach often leads to the same direction the regenerative movement advocates. More local value. Less negative impact. A better balance between economy, community, and nature. But without the implicit norm that everything falling short of that standard is inadequate. This prevents expectations that nobody can meet, and stops leaders stepping back because the challenge has been framed as too large and too abstract. It keeps attention where it belongs: on the choices that genuinely matter, rather than on initiatives that are visible but structurally inconsequential. In the end, chances of success are better.
Because that, ultimately, is the risk of the current debate. That we keep talking about what sounds good and looks good, while the harder trade-offs go unaddressed. About growth, accessibility, dependence on international mobility. About climate change, which will not be resolved by a cleanup action or a compelling local story, but only through harder choices about distance, transport, volume, and policy. About whether tourism, in some cases, may simply not be the right answer.
We have to be honest about the limits of what is within reach. Tourism can do a great deal: reduce emissions, shape choices, grow local value. But it will not solve the climate problem. That requires decisions beyond the power of individual operators or destinations: consumer behaviour, governments, aviation policy, international climate agreements.
Which is precisely why this does not begin with a model. It begins with a judgment. What does this place need? For whom does it work? And what is the evidence?
Start there.
Isabel Mosk is a tourism strategist and founder of Sherpa’s Stories. She has worked with more than 50 destinations worldwide, visited 100 countries, and advises organisations on trends, strategy, positioning, and storytelling.
William Bakker is a place marketing strategist and founder of DAAR Place Consulting. Over twenty-five years, he has worked on dozens of destination and place brands and strategies for organisations on five continents.
