From different realities to a common approach

How can a common approach to regenerative tourism work across destinations with very different starting points? As REDIRECT moves from developing its Toolkit to testing it in practice, experiences from across the partnership are helping answer that question.

REDIRECT brings together nine partners from seven countries with different tourism contexts, governance structures, stakeholder networks and levels of experience with regenerative tourism.

That diversity is central to the project, but it has also presented an important challenge: how to develop a common Toolkit that provides a coherent approach to regenerative tourism while remaining relevant and applicable in very different regional contexts.

The four components of the REDIRECT Toolkit address different parts of this challenge, from regenerative tourism planning and visitor behaviour to impact assessment, tour design and monitoring. The individual tools have been developed by different Action Leaders across the partnership, making coordination and exchange between partners an important part of bringing them together.

According to the REDIRECT Lead Partner, the development process has shown why this joint perspective is necessary. Although the tools were discussed across the partnership during development, their initial versions naturally reflected the perspectives of the partners responsible for them. At the same time, experience with regenerative tourism varies considerably between the partner regions.

Reviewing the tools together has therefore been important for strengthening their consistency and ensuring that the individual components complement each other as parts of one Toolkit.

Testing brings in another perspective

As the Toolkit has moved into testing, the organisations and people expected to use the tools are adding another layer to this development process.

One of the lessons emerging from the testing is that regenerative tourism does not have the same starting point everywhere.

For some stakeholders, the concept is already relatively familiar. For others, sustainable tourism provides a much more established frame of reference, requiring further explanation of what distinguishes a regenerative approach.

Practical accessibility has also proved important. In some partner regions, working translations were needed because asking stakeholders to engage with beta versions in English created an additional barrier to participation.

At the same time, the testing has shown the value of putting something concrete in front of stakeholders. Initial hesitation towards the concept and the tools has, in some cases, changed once stakeholders were able to see and work with the beta versions and provide comments based on their own professional and local contexts.

Those observations are now contributing to the further refinement of the Toolkit.

Learning across different realities

The differences between the partner regions are not simply challenges to overcome. They are also an important part of what the transnational cooperation contributes to REDIRECT.

Barbara Buryta, representing the REDIRECT Lead Partner; Lower Silesia Regional Development Agency, highlights this diversity as one of the project’s strengths:

“The fact that REDIRECT brings together partners from seven countries with very diverse tourism contexts is definitely a strength of the project, enabling it to take various conditions into account and develop tools that address different possibilities.”

Working across these different contexts allows the partnership to compare experiences and examine how common principles function under different conditions. Regions where regenerative tourism is still an emerging concept can also draw on the experiences of partners and stakeholders who have already worked more extensively with similar approaches.

But the exchange is not only relevant to the development of the Toolkit itself.

For Jens Rulle, REDIRECT partner from Læsø Tourism and Business, the partnership also creates learning that partners can take back into their own organisations and destinations:

“One of the real strengths of REDIRECT is the partnership itself. We come from very different destinations and work within different realities, but that gives us an opportunity to learn from each other’s experiences, challenges and ways of working with local stakeholders. The different perspectives enrich the work we do together and often make us look at our own practices in a new way. That learning is valuable not only for the development and testing of REDIRECT, but also something we can take back and use in our daily work at our own destinations.”     

This exchange between different realities is an important part of the REDIRECT development process. It allows the partnership to identify where common approaches are useful, where local adaptation is necessary and what different destinations can learn from each other.

As testing continues, the experiences gathered across the partner regions will inform the further refinement of the Toolkit. At the same time, the transnational cooperation is creating knowledge and perspectives that extend beyond the individual tools – strengthening the capacity of the partners themselves to work with regenerative tourism in their own contexts.

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