Truth Behind Travel Podcast

Regenerative Tourism - beyond the buzzword in conversation with Tina O'Dwyer

• Season 4 • Episode 78

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Dolores Semeraro interviews Tina O'Dwyer - Founder & Chief Facilitator at The Tourism Space® on Regenerative Tourism: where does a destination start the journey? 

About Tina O'Dwyer

She is the Founder and CEO of the Tourism Space, a leading consultancy and education provider partnering with the public sector to enable sustainable, regenerative and collaborative approaches to tourism. They work alongside government departments, public sector agencies, not-for-profit organisations, destination stewards, and EU projects to drive meaningful change. 

Working on the practice of sustainable and regenerative tourism since 2009, her contributions have been recognised nationally and internationally through multiple awards, including the All-Ireland Business Foundation's Tourism Businessperson of the Year award. 

She serves as Sustainability Advisor for World Travel Market in London, on the Sustainability Committee of the Irish Association of Visitor Experiences and Attractions (AVEA) and as a Member of the Advisory Board of Atlantic Technological University (ATU). 

About The Tourism Space®

The Tourism Space® is a leading international consultancy that specialises in enabling sustainable, regenerative and collaborative approaches to tourism. They provide training, facilitation, coaching, speaking and consultancy services to government departments, public sector agencies, not-for-profit organisations, European Institutions and EU-funded projects.

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On this episode: 

  • Challenges and Resistance in Implementing Regenerative Tourism
  • Economic Perspective and Visitor Segmentation
  • Responsibility and Visitor Behaviour
  • Collaboration and Community Involvement


Dolores Semeraro is a sought-after international tourism keynote speaker and sustainable tourism marketing professional.

Dolores actively works in the tourism and travel conference space as a keynote speaker and moderator, gracing the stages of international tourism summits and trade shows.

As a professional keynote speaker, Dolores’ speaking topics encompass sustainable digital marketing for the tourism industry, how to establish digital mastery, and learn how to identify today’s traveler’s needs.

During the pandemic, Dolores launched her podcast show named ‘Truth Behind Travel Podcast’ where she regularly interviews tourism and travel industry leaders and representatives on how to rebuild the future of travel.

In the recent years, Dolores has continued to work and live on beautiful islands such as Mauritius, where she started her tourism and hospitality marketing consultancy working closely with the Mauritian luxury hospitality sector as corporate trainer.

According to her international clients, Dolores is a gifted trainer and intuitive workshop facilitator.

She is now based in Europe where she actively works as keynote speaker and corporate trainer in the tourism industry.

www.doloressemeraro.com

dolores@doloressemeraro.com

Instagram @dolores_semeraro

LinkedIn @dolores.sem

Dolores Semeraro:

welcome to Truth Behind travel podcast, a platform for tourism, travel and hospitality professionals and enthusiasts to share, learn and unlearn what we need to create better tourism, protect the environment and become better humans. I'm your host, Dolores Semeraro, and every week, I bring on a podcast the voices of those out there making a difference to learn the hard truth behind the world of travel and tourism, what works and what we can collectively do better. Welcome to Season Four, a series of conversations fully dedicated to women in travel, the trailblazers, the visionaries who have been and continue to be the force for good. We need to hear more from joining us on the show. I am thrilled to welcome truth behind travel podcast sponsor women travel leaders. Women travel leaders is a community that supports high performing, purpose driven travel business leaders to grow their business in less time by fostering a community of heart led leaders who prioritize authenticity and impact above all else. Are you ready to start thriving in your travel business and your life through connecting with a powerful community that truly has your back. Well, head over to the show notes and on the link mention Dolores in the referrer name to first access when applications open and receive 25% off your first year of membership. Welcome back to truth behind travel Podcast. Today we are literally diving into the world of regenerative Tourism and Travel its principles how institutions, both public and private and the communities, are responding to it without forgetting, where does the traveler stand in this equation? My guest today is the founder and chief executive officer of the tourism space, a leading consultancy and education provider partnering the public sector to enable sustainable, regenerative and collaborative approaches to tourism. She has been working on the practices of sustainable and regenerative tourism since 2009 her contributions have been recognized nationally, in Ireland and internationally through multiple awards recognitions while she was gracing the stages of well known summits and conferences all around the world, as well as being an advocate of responsible tourism herself, join me in welcoming the founder and chief facilitator of the tourism space. Tina O'Dwyer, welcome back to the show. Welcome to Season Four and to a very special episode. So I'm honored and very, very excited to have on the podcast. Tina O'Dwyer, the co founder of the tourism space. Welcome. Thank you so much, Dolores. I think with the conversations we've had when we met in London last year, around the subject of really portraying and developing more awareness around the principles and the visions around the concept of regenerative tourism, is a conversation that I wanted to bring on the podcast. We've never opened it. We've never had an opportunity to really dive into what does it really mean for destinations, for tourism, entrepreneurs, for professionals, for travel, business owners. I think this episode will give an opportunity to those listening, an opportunity to understand it better, to understand what that journey looks like, what that process looked like, and how you, as a subject matter expert, so to speak, as an advocate of regenerative tourism, made it the true core of your mission and vision of the tourism space. So before we go into the questions, and I know I have them full line up, and in true spirit of the podcast, some of them are quite controversial. Would you like to share a little bit of your journey, and how did you get to where you are today, what inspired you along the way and what really defined the work that you put forward.

Tina O'Dwyer:

Okay, thanks again, Dolores for having me. I've been working in tourism since about 2009 so nearly, yeah, a long time, and I accidentally got involved in tourism because I moved to the place where I live now, which is in the west of Ireland. I had spent time at home with my very young children for two or three years, and I was looking for a way back to work. And I got a part time job near home that was very flexible, that was about supporting an emerging network in the area where I lived, a tourism network. And this group was kind of piloting and checking out the idea of eco tourism, which was at that time in 2009 kind of a buzzword, but really, very few people were doing anything about it, and it was very fringe. And so I kind of, as I said, accidentally got involved. And I just found myself getting more and more involved with that group. The the role expanded over time thanks to an expansion of the pilot. And I spent probably seven or eight years working in our region on what we called, at the time, eco tourism and sustainable tourism, and then when, when, when that came to a close. We actually, in that period, it became a very creative, innovative space in tourism. It was about building this network and supporting the businesses to implement sustainable practices and through a pretty large EU funded project, we really got to test collaborative approaches to tourism, which was working with the businesses, but also with all the public stakeholders and the communities and all the voices in the area. We got to test certification with business. We developed training for sustainability, which is quite mainstream now, but didn't exist then, and in the course of that, we came to realize that looking externally to the place for standards, for training, for all of that wasn't serving us very well at the time, that we needed to actually look internally from the place up and kind of work out, what did we want from this place? How could we achieve it through tourism, if we could achieve it through tourism at all, and how did we need to work together to bring about a shared vision? So that was, I mean, transformative for me, that that whole thing, and it was seen as a really good model, I suppose, internationally and nationally as well. It won a lot of awards and recognitions. And the model, even though was part of an EU funded program has continued after the funding, many, many years after that, and that's a great testament, I think, to it, because that's not always the case. And during lockdown, in during COVID, I was sitting on webinars, you know, listening to lots of innovative people like podcasts and stuff like that, and I heard somebody that I really admired mentioned that project as a really good example of regenerative tourism. And I got very interested in regenerative tourism during lockdown. It was kind of my thing to get and I hadn't heard the word before then. And I did realize, and I came to appreciate, that what we were doing had incidentally, accidentally been following those principles. Yeah, that that time when we moved here was was quite transformative. Out of that, I set up the tourism space in 2017 and set out to to work with businesses and destinations. I have to be honest, I didn't say it was all about sustainability and regeneration. Then, because being very honest, I would have got no work if I had done that. It was very much niche and alternative and not very well supported, I would say, in general, like around the world. And that has changed a lot in the in the time since then, so the tourism space since 2017 and now just being recognized as member of B certified as a member of B Corps, yeah, yeah. Well, in that time, I mean, we've, we've had a chance to work on amazing projects with amazing clients, here in Ireland, mainly, but also in the in Great Britain and in other places around the world, increasingly, I suppose, more international. The team has grown from just myself to now being three of us full time and a number of part time people that work with us and a panel of trainers. We're delighted we have a great team in place now, certainly over the last two to three years, all of the work is in the area of sustainable and regenerative tourism. So we do a lot of facilitation training and kind of advisory consulting. I myself do quite a bit of speaking and MC work as well. So it's very diverse. I love it. It's never, never one day have I been bored since working with it, but really, really enjoy making, making an impact. And as you say, we have just announced that we've been certified as a B Corporation, and we're really delighted and proud, proud of that as well.

Dolores Semeraro:

So when the conversation with tourism boards, tourism organizations, institutions that you support, in terms of training, workshops, facilitations and guidance, really, on how to get started. When they sit down and they look at what they've done, where they stand and what they were, where they want to be, how does that journey look like for them? What are the questions that they ask you?

Tina O'Dwyer:

Yeah, I think obviously, questions are a really big part of the work we do. Because when you're like, you say a destination is thinking about maybe an alternative way of doing things, or framing things a little bit differently, a huge role lies on the questions you ask yourselves. You know, so we find, generally destinations are used to asking the primary question of, how do we get more visitors here? You know, that tends to be the starting conversation, and that's changing. And now we're starting to ask much different questions, which are, what does a good future look like for this place? What does a good future look like for this community? And then the question becomes, how can tourism help us deliver that so. So it kind of puts tourism as a supplementary question to a much bigger question. And you find in some destinations, they say, well, well, it can't, you know, it can't. Or generally, you find that it can, but you start to shape then tourism in a different way. So I would say, when you're at that point where you have identified a vision for the place and the people who live there, you can then have a very different conversation about creating a tourism plan, for example. So I would say in the first instance, most of those destinations engage in a deep listening exercise, a conversation and a listening exercise that's framed around questions designed to bring out new answers. You know, new answers. I think sometimes we destinations are realizing that it isn't a shortage of visitors that's the issue. It's maybe a bit more focus on the type of visitor, the time that the visitor comes, the what the visitor wants to do, what we want to share with them, what the hosts want to do. And so we get into some very, very different and interesting questions. It's one of the most enjoyable, enjoyable parts of the of the of the of the work, like any really interesting question is, what would nature say if it was sitting at the table, you know, and actually personifying the kind of things that that people want to hear? So I think probably the biggest step is the destination, wanting to ask a new question. If we, if we try with the same old question, which is, how do we get more visitors here, you tend not to be involved in a regenerative conversation at that point. How does the resistance? If there is any resistance that you, you know you feel around the table, or you meet in this in these gatherings and meetings, how does that resistance look like? What what do they what do they question? What do they dumped? The result, yeah, I think, I think resistance almost sounds like it's an active thing that people resist. You know, I think if I were to be a bit philosophical about it, when you speak about the principles of regeneration, and you know, regenerating things for the good, leaving places better than they found them doing well by nature, by people, by place, nobody resists that. That speaks directly to our hearts and our guts, and it makes sense. It's very instinctive. It's very intuitive. Why would we want anything else? Why would we want something that isn't doing that? But when you get into actually trying to activate some of those principles, I wouldn't say there's active resistance, but there are constraints on people. There are very real constraints on that. And I think the first ones we find, being very honest is, you know, can I do all this and still make money? That would be a business perspective, yeah, I want to do all that. And I am doing, actually, a lot of native local businesses naturally do a lot of this, you know, I need to make money. I need to employ my staff. You know, I need to know that's absolutely 100% valid. And I think, well, I'll come back to whether it really works or not. I think, from a policy makers perspective, policy makers are very definitely constrained by the policy itself. Like we tend to find, policies are made for four or five year periods. Regenerative tourism has come to the fore within the last period, within the four or five years that COVID was also a feature, for example. So policies can get out of date, but those in charge of implementing them are bound by those policies, where budgets are allocated and what actions they have to implement and what they have to report on. I think that's a real constraint.

Dolores Semeraro:

Well, nobody starts from zero really like And one of the things I like to speak about is, how do you, how do you step into a new paradigm when you're standing in the current one, you know? So we really are in a in the case of they say, Oh, we have a destination that nobody has ever transition, you know, of we, we have this ideal of regenerative tourism, but it is beyond where we are right now, and we can only ever take the next step that's in front of us, which won't bring us all the way to regeneration, but might bring us in alignment with those principles. So I think they're the two biggest constraints, and different stakeholders see different constraints. If you ask the businesses, they might say that. You ask the policymakers, you ask the community, it's something else, communities, resistances, having heard of. Let's start from zero, and we are verging ground. a voice and being listened to. You know, the kind of feel not listened to enough. You know, we've seen that play out very dramatically this year. So it depends on the stakeholder and their perspective. And I think that's why collaborative approaches are so central to regenerative is you have to realize that everyone has a stake here, and their perspective will be different. Everybody starts with a rethinking process. You basically encourage them and invite them to rethink and rethink in something that we've based our certainty on. We've based our assumptions and our unfortunately assumptions, but also the things we feel are grounding us are giving us stabilities in the business, the Rethinking process that needs to be ignited for an organization to to move the first steps really and to embrace. Raise a different type of thinking mechanism. It's often, I believe something that it's it's where I see more resistance, because when you are taken away from what makes you feel stable, certain of what you're of your position, and then you're here, you're at the table of conversation, of the unknown, something that is new, and yes, it is fundamentally right, but is it accepted?

Tina O'Dwyer:

Well, undoubtedly. I mean, you put your finger on it, it's our as with most things, what does change in gender? It engenders fear. It's fear of the unknown and us not knowing. I think if you go back to the resistance, one of the biggest areas of resistance is, how do we measure this? How do we measure if we take this approach? Because a lot of what regenerative speaks about is not doesn't lend itself to the traditional metrics that we are using and have been using in tourism. And I really do empathize with that. You know that I would say the people, the real thinkers and writers and regenerative tourism would resist that idea of metrics. They would say, it's a question from the old paradigm, you know, and we're trying to transfer this into this. I have a lot of sympathy for it, because the way our world is set up, and that's how things that's how it works. We have to measure where money is spent. We have to measure where time is spent. We have to be able to report an impact. And I think that's probably if I were to say the next step for Regenerative tourism, or where a lot of the focus on our work is, is bringing these principles into actionables that have accountability attached to them, and then have reportability attached to them. Because until we can do that, we're not really going to be able to advance the transition that we're seeing there. But apart from, I think we're finding, you know, so much of what's happening in our world right now is an unknown. You know we're in, we're in a stage, stage of huge transition in the world, even just if you take AI, if you take all the geopolitical issues, if you take the climate so much ahead of us is an unknown right now, and one thing that I know for certain is that the current way of doing things cannot continue into the future. The current day of doing things has presented us with a lot of limitations and constraints that we have to acknowledge and we have to find another way around. I think the strength is back into us working together in that I'm a great believer, if we can get clarity of the vision we as people and locally, but as humanity overall, we have the resources to come up with answers. I mean, we've shown that time and again, and we're now at necessity as the mother of invention. We're now at that point of necessity and tourism where we have to find a new way forward. We don't have to shed everything that we're doing right now, but we do have to start looking at new ways forward.

Dolores Semeraro:

At some point, I ask myself, Okay, wait a second, this the regenerative approach is, when does it? When does the tourism element comes in, rather than being an economic approach?

Tina O'Dwyer:

You know, that's a really good question, to be honest. The question not asked and often not asked or answered enough, I suppose, in the regenerative debate, okay, I'm going to step it back. I'm totally not against economy and profit. And if I look at the model we use in our business, the place paradigm, we start with the place Central. Okay, so what? What's, what do we want for this place? What do the people in this place want for this place? And then we look at outcomes, the first of which I call profitable local businesses. We move around a circle of things, but to me, that's the first one. Not everyone agrees with that, but to me, that's the first one, because if we don't have that, we don't have the buy in and resources to deliver on the other elements, which relate to nature, community, visitor experience, all of that. You know, climate action. So for me, the economy is is the first measurable impact and outcome. So let's take currently tourism, the current tourism model, when you find reporting on the economic value of tourism, it tends to be at the national level, GDP, number of visitors entering the airports, number of visitors traveling around the country. Spend per head, per visitor on an average right, not on, not on a local and within regenerative I feel that the obligation is to measure the local economy, the economy attached to the place where tourism is taking place. So for me, where I live, it's a highly touristed area. It really is only an academic interest. How many visitors came through Dublin Airport last year, and whether that was up or down, what is relevant to me and my place is how many visitors came here. How many stayed here? How many spent longer than a pass through visit? How many spent money here? How many local businesses depend on tourism? How many local people I mean living in the area? Do those businesses employ? What is the ripple effect within the economy of having tourism or not having tourism to local people? And then you talk about the social economy as well, which I know isn't the question you were But the quality of life of people locally, is it enhanced asking me. by tourism, or is it, in some way, you know, not enhanced by tourism? So that's what I mean. I think that's that's a fundamental shift. We know that there's a lot of money made in tourism. We also know that not enough of it is made in the local destination where the tourism takes place. And that's general, that's general across the board. So that's, that's one of the ways you would shift the economy. But I do think back as well. If we talk about regenerative tourism, we're talking about authentic experiences taking place in their place, experiences you couldn't have somewhere else with local people. And of course, all the all the built in infrastructure around that an important part to that is, if we have those type, that type, that purpose driven, place driven development of experiences and infrastructure, then that is going to be economically successful. And we've seen that in a number of destinations. And the reason for that is people travel for difference, right? People travel, tourists move to other places so they can experience something different, to what they have at home, or to where they've been somewhere else, and the more you are place centered in your development of the experience, the more you're preserving that difference. We're in a world that's moving towards inexorable globalization, standardization, homogenization. Tourism is one of those industries that actually has the economic incentive to maintain your differentiation, to maintain your distinction, your local habits, your local customs, your local way of life, your local stories, all of that stuff. And I think in the overall world of tourism, or the world beyond tourism and sustainability, that's a really important contribution of this industry that perhaps other industries don't contribute, they contribute other things to global well being. But I think that's one of the things that tourism really needs to be proud, proud of, that it does do, because it economically incentivizes that differentiation and localization.

Dolores Semeraro:

Well, the economic perspective of it, to me, calls for an observation on on who is actually the economic who are the economic players of a location?. So we just refer to visitors looking for something different, authentic, experiential and in the conversation in the previous podcast with Anna Pollock, who spoke about this extractive mentality of the visitor that has been brought up, feeling like a consumer rather than an explorer or rather than a guest in someone else's house. From, let's step back, not from a visitor's point of view, but from a from a working point. So from from those working in the industry at a destination level, who is involved in really bringing the regenerative approach to life?

Tina O'Dwyer:

It's a great question. And again, we're talking about, it's all about questions in regenerative tourism, that's one I'd be encouraging anyone who's listening to think about that Well, who's involved in tourism in this place, because we're starting to see as more destinations move into a sustainable or regeneratively minded place, or a place driven approach to tourism, and they're seeing just how wide that goes. We would have traditionally thought, well, the businesses are involved and the visitors are involved. And we had, in many countries, complete social license to work away on that basis. You know that it didn't, you know, like a standalone little silo of activity that was happening. And in reality, we know there's far more involved. So when we started to see things like the European tourism indicator system or the gstc global standards, you even see written into those 10 years back, 15 years back, a much wider group of stakeholders. So obviously, the local community, the people who live there, first and foremost, have traditionally not had a voice. They've not been consulted, and they haven't had an avenue. And when we see the kind of protests we saw, which don't happen everywhere. I appreciate that, but that we saw this summer those community if you read any of the articles or the interviews, people were just saying, we feel we don't have a say anymore. You know, that was their biggest thing. They weren't against tourism. They were against their exclusion from it and the impact that that was having. So having a voice for communities and acknowledging their impact, obviously, tourism and hospitality businesses themselves, the policy makers, government, anybody who's involved in from a regulatory or a protective, I suppose, role in conserving and managing forests, rivers, lakes, roads, waterways, all of those kind of things. And the marginalized voices which we know we haven't had enough of kind of diversity. So anybody, anybody within the destination that may not traditionally be in the consultant, we know that the universities and the academics and the researchers are very important in driving this agenda as well. Obviously the visitors themselves is really important, that we are that we are including them, and we're seeing a great shift from, you know, satisfying the visitor at all costs to making visitors aware of their responsibilities as well. And I think one of the very important things are storytellers and communicators, people who are able to articulate new ideas or articulate the place and articulate what's being discussed in a room of so many diverse people. And I think that's an artist and that type of stuff. So it goes so wide, the police force are heavily involved. Do you know what I mean, in any destination as well and all of that. So yeah, it becomes much more complicated to collaborate, and it takes a longer process, but I think you have a longer legacy as a result of that, then you have much more buy in

Dolores Semeraro:

and many other forces and expertise are also involved along the process that are not necessarily coming

Tina O'Dwyer:

Well, I have to say, I've never been asked the through from within the tourism industry, so agriculture, safety, you mentioned the police forces, of course, like all the regulations that are reinforced and for example, let's think about the national parks and the misbehavior of of visitors. And I, when I look at this type of I've been traveling across Spain and Greece and seeing how they, for example, just down on the ground, you know, like practical examples of respecting the rules question, how do we get rid of those visitors? I think, I put in place for for visitors from the businesses. And so where does responsibility? Where does the responsibility lies? It lies in the visitor side, or it lies in the business sides. Who tells who to do what, for the sake of progressing and you know, moving forward in the right direction and respecting don't, I don't think that's, that's where people start, you know, I think probably it's a process of defining the type of visitor you want to attract. Visitors are opting into your the rules is something that needs to either, I believe, and destination. So what message is, is inviting them? You know, that's, that's the question. What message is inviting them. I I've seen it, it, it needs to be as it is, a responsibility of sometimes talk about this idea of reverse segmentation, you know, where it's been very typical all along this, you know, we invest heavily in researching visitors, segmenting the visitors, and a responsibility of those is who's them, identifying their needs, identifying the homogenous groups relatively that you can speak to, and developing a message and identifying the channels that they speak to. So checking? Are you actually respecting the rules? Are you we know we can do that if you do it the other way around, which destinations who might be practicing a regenerative approach, instead of looking first at the visitor, they look actually doing what you're told you should do? And if you don't, inwards to themselves, and they look at, well, what's in our place that's unique and special? What do we want to preserve for the future? What are we most passionate about? Our experiences should be built around those. And now let's find my question is, for a destination that wants to move the visitors who share that passion and interest. Yeah, that that sounds completely logical, as you say, it doesn't it? We forward with a regenerative approach. How do you get rid of know there's a Facebook group for almost every interest in the world, and there's several other avenues for them. We know we can speak directly to the people who match the kind of offering we bad tourists? How do you get rid of the visitors you do not want want to put out there, and we can choose not to speak to others that we that we don't, and that's, that's what we've been doing forever. So it's not that complicated at all. When we because you from an airline, for example, it's very simple, go on look at, I'll take the example of we can. Take the example of Canaries, the type of industry they have now is exactly the a blacklist, get on a plane, no more. But how about a visitor? type of industry they sought to develop. And we speak about, you know, everything is great until you reach the tipping point, and then the negatives start to come very quickly. And that's, I How does that work? Because I feel it would really, how do you suppose, one of the issues. I'm not blind to the limitations of the idealism of a regenerative approach, but I'm equally not blind to the limitations of let's just keep growing until we say it will really undermine the efforts and the budget and the reach the tipping point, because we can see, we've enough evidence from lots of destinations that there is a tipping point. If you just keep growing numbers, you have to money put into this process. So what do you think? What do you keep growing some other metrics. So equally, here in Ireland, for example, tourism has been a fantastic input to Ireland, you know, to its development. It's a relatively a relatively young normally suggest to destination to do? country, so there's a very positive disposition to to tourism in Ireland. But certainly the tourism that was developed once, once the state started to invest in that was about come to Ireland and do a week's journey, you know, see all the highlights. And we had, you know, five, six big highlights, and you could do that in a week, or you could do that in two weeks. And that was really successful. And now, though, we realized that's not great for everybody else, and then we have all these hot spots, so now we're trying to disperse visitors and go to more places. So it was just kind of it worked for a while, and now we have to find other ways, other ways of working with that. But I firmly believe we're in charge of our messaging and our positioning, and if we decide we're going to source that from within, rather than source that from a segmentation analysis of what visitors somewhere else want. Rather than packaging ourselves up in the way visitors wanted, we package it up way up in the way we want to represent ourselves. And you, you find the visitor that also values that.

Dolores Semeraro:

It's a big compromise, though, and I think it's a compromise that not many destinations are ready to do, because you you may have a team designated to develop a regenerative approach for the destination because that's the right thing to do, or because it's the thing to do nowadays, depending What the buzzword and what the trend element at play is but then you look in the communication strategies of these places and this beautiful location. I mean, I think about Maldives, for example, beautiful islands, 2 million visitors. New airport coming in. More and more island being developed and from, I mean, you're an island to another island, okay, maybe smaller, but equally, you know, a global powerhouse, the communication strategy put forward says nothing of regenerative tourism or or says does not speak of a regenerative approach, does not ring the bell To those who are willing to listen to that specific message, and like Maldives, like many other destinations, where do you see that happening?

Tina O'Dwyer:

Well, I would say again, it's, I have two points to make on that. Firstly, it's about balance. Okay, so we've said we agree that economy is really important for any of this to work. You need visitors, and you need visitors spending money, and you need to, you know, you need to attract them. So that's a given. Okay. I also think the one thing I learned from those early years that I told you about is talk about regenerative or sustainable, or climate action, or any of those things are what I call under the bonus. They don't appear in your marketing. They appear in how you develop what you're doing, how you involve people in the process, how you present what you do to visitors, how you measure your success. But they're not something you put in front of a visitor. Hey, come to us because we're regenerative. Like, who does that when they want to go on a holiday? You You're still presenting the best possible experience that you can present the most economically, I suppose, rewarding for the destination, while balancing, while balancing the needs of community, nature and other things. So it's not, it's not that you can just make profit in a silo on its own. It's that that has to balance with the rest. Generally, we'll find profitable local businesses are leading to stronger, more resilient communities. So that's why. Back to what I said earlier. I think the profit is the first metric we made. The mistake in that first destination I told you about, when we first got everyone trained, everyone certified, people were doing their energy, wastewater metrics, you know, all the stuff that at the time nobody was doing. Our first brochure was all about that. Hey, look at us. We're great. You're going to have three different things in your room, and you're going to be in a room that was powered by solar energy, or you're going to be nobody wants that. That's nobody wants that for their holidays. That's not the message. The message is still what you're going to experience of the place and the people and the food and the culture and whatever else. But it's, it's about, if we're talking about the purpose of tourism, the purpose is for the local people, for those who are and the visitor and the national agencies and the national agenda. I appreciate that, but that's not marketing copy, you know. So I wouldn't expect the Maldives to be putting out there, or any destination to be putting regeneration in the front of it when you saw really clever examples, like New Zealand, one is, has been touted a lot where they said, You know, I forget what it was, but the, the non social network or something like, you know, go to the places where you don't take a an Instagram photograph, for example, that was, that was one way of flipping it. It was a regenerative message. When the was, it the Falkland, not, the, what was the the Pharaoh islands. Um, had that thing of, you know, we shut down for a month. We shut down for a month here. So you can't come here in that month because we're busy, you know, recovering the place in ourselves, you know. So that's a regenerative message, without putting it all over, all over the marketing. Um, so I think any place that is true. Really regenerative or sustainable in their ethos. That's something you experience when you're there. That becomes something you absorb as a visitor, and you see because it's truly being lived in the destination or in the business. We've been hearing for a long, long time, the visitors are catching up with this. I've been hearing that for all the time of being in tourism, there's no evidence to suggest that they're making decisions on the basis of this. It's an there still isn't. 15 years later, there's there's evidence to suggest it's increasingly important and increasingly of interest, but they're not making decisions on the back of this. So yeah, I think the place for the regenerative messaging is under the bonnet, internally within the destination, rather than in the visitor marketing. And then the visitor experiences it when they come.

Dolores Semeraro:

It's brutal, is it? Yeah, it's, it's, it could feel like a dead end for tourism operators, business owners, even you know, the family owning a shop with homemade souvenirs or something in a small, little coastal town somewhere, being there for 30 years, and now someone goes by and say, You know what? Hey, you are an authentic experience. And the business owner goes like, am I? I've been here 30 years doing the same. Now you're telling me I'm an authentic experience. Okay? And then it's a local business. So the if you buy from them, the money stays with the family that lives there and feeds, you know, multi generational sort of, maybe people living in the under the same roof. And so it's community tourism. Oh, really, am I a community? Okay? Well, we've been here 30 years, doing the same. So it's the definition. It's the art of definition that we so love. In the tourism industry, we have to define. We have to put a name and a label on everything, even if that's very same business. It's been there for 30 years doing exactly the same thing, and it's happening with regenerative tourism, the buzzword. How can we make sure we don't fall for the same in

Tina O'Dwyer:

You're so right. You're so right. We've been the same trap. wrapping ourselves up in knots for like ever about this whole topic of, let's call broadly sustainable that, that discussion. Um, as I said, back when I, when I started in this there was so much debate about what is sustainable, eco conscious, green responsible. You know, we were wrapped up in that, and now here we are, at this point, and it's all the versions of regenerative, and which is what, and what does it mean? And I really have no interest whatsoever in being the regenerative tourism police, or word police or or the the advocate for the term, because I think exactly what you've said there, right, exactly, and it's back to back to what we said before. Regenerative tourism sounds terribly complicated, and people feel, Oh, that's too hard for us to do, but actually it's completely natural and instinctive, and it's what had been happening for a very long time, and it's what would happen if we stopped getting so wrapped up and complicating it, you know, and labeling it, I do think regenerative theory and thinking and systems thinking that is that is really something that can be challenging to understand and that you have to work hard to do, but in and to shift your kind of thinking into that. But if we were, if we want to move to actionable, action and impact. If we just sit to what's instinctive and intuitive to us, I think you're going to find that's where you land. Think the biggest shift is to think through the lens of place, through the lens of place, because when you think through the lens, that's simple, we all get that. Is it, like you said earlier, do we call it a destination, or do we call it a habitat? You know, it's like, let's just call it a place, because everybody gets that. And the reason we use the place paradigm is when you asked about all those collaborators and stakeholders that should be involved, the only thing in any of the rooms I've been in that everybody in the room has in common is the place, right? They either love the place, they're from the place, they chose the place, whichever it is, or they have an obligation to the place through their work or through policy or through laws or something like that. But the place is something kind of indisputably in common. Everything else is an agenda. You know, We all come with our own agendas, but the only place where we cross over is we can agree that we all have a stake in that and we all have a positive intention for that place. And there's very, very few people who want to be involved in tourism or any other industry that is really damaged as a place. There's very few who come in with that intention or that they don't care, that they don't care. Most people have a very positive sense of care for their place. And when you can get to that, that common ground, and you start the conversation there, then we're going to lead to pretty, pretty smart answers. And back to when I said I was surprised to hear the project I was involved in, in the burn and county care to be called regenerative during a regenerative tourism webinar in 2020 nobody in the burn still uses the word regenerative in relation, in relation to that project. But the tipping point was when it shifted its mindset from being we need a vision for the place, not for the business. Yeah, we need a we need a vision and and I think that's that's as simple as it gets. I think we may have the ship, may have sailed as to whether regenerative tourism is a buzzword, I think it has become a buzzword now, and we're caught in that debate about what it means. And I think it's just, it's just a distraction. Above all else, regenerative tourism is about doing the work, about creating impact, about, as I said, finding some way to measuring that, about raising some awareness amongst us all, amongst everybody, but with humility, you know, not preaching to people, but with that sense, back to what you said earlier, that we don't quite know where we're going, but we know the path in front of us is changing. We know we're having to change the way we do it. And I think it's that humility to understand that, that we don't have the answers, that we have perhaps a set of guiding principles that we can work to that are a bit different, to the guiding principles we have been working to. And that's not to criticize what we have been working to, because I know many people would know I've said that they worked really well for a really long time. You know, they really did serve a good purpose and contributed tourism has contributed a lot of benefit around the world. It's just recognizing now that we have a different environment and a different kind of also a different kind of set of values emerging in the world. You know that that means, okay, let's let's reconsider. Let's work together. Let's believe in our own ability to find these answers. You know, humans are nothing if not resourceful. And certainly, one of the big things about regenerative tourism is leaning into the wisdom of of nature and the natural world that really has. And I know as soon as we go there, some people switch off and go, oh god, that's all so, so vague. But it's not so vague, you know, if you look around you at the laws and principles of nature that have been going on for millions of years, way longer than us, that has that interconnected system of everything works or nothing works, then even that, in itself is a good principle to go from. So we don't have to become a tree to understand the principles that might apply. Do you know what I mean? So, yeah, I think, I think the

Dolores Semeraro:

we should almost go back and re record this episode, making sure that every time we feel the urge to buzzword is here. Is here? There's no doubt about that. say the word regenerative, we don't and we we use a different set of words. Perhaps an explanation, and maybe this could be a solution. Maybe this could bring further clarity. Maybe this could use, could be an opportunity. It could be seen It's just much less about that if we just said it's about our places, as an opportunity to say, Okay, if the word regenerate, when that becomes a buzzword, people stop listening and go, Ah, okay, here we go again. And they think they know what they know. But if we try to find a more self explanatory ways of expressing this concept. I think we give an opportunity to open up to new conversation to happen, and in your journey, in your professional journey, you've had that conversation many times and since, since 2017 with the tourism space, and even before, as a woman in tourism, and because this season is so strongly focused on the voices of the women in tourism, I can't help but asking probably a very cliche question. But the question may be cliche, but the answer certainly not, because that is always different. Where did you find this conversation to be the most challenging? When did your voice felt, I wouldn't say unheard, but when did you feel that the difficulties and that challenges along your professional journey.

Tina O'Dwyer:

Before I answer that properly, I should tell you a little bit about myself. I grew up in a very traditional home in Ireland with five brothers, no sisters, and the dynamic of the family very much, you know, in traditional values, and that didn't work in my favor as as a female in the house. So my, I definitely a feminist, definitely well rounded thoughts on that, and did, did most of my feminist fighting before the age of 18, you know, in my, in my home situation, and I have to say, well, I don't shy away from, from, you know, promoting female entrepreneurs. I don't identify on the female side of things, if that makes sense, I think one of the decisions I made when I when I entered the world in my own right was, you know, and it formed by by my growing up years was, for me, it's just about being the same rather than being defined differently. And I think to be defined as a female entrepreneur is almost. You know, there's a little bit of undermining yourself almost by doing that, you're almost making yourself different from the beginning. So, but I have to say, I feel very lucky that I live in a society and a country and came through an education system, and we're and a work system here, where I never felt a challenge based on being female. I really didn't feel that. And in tourism, far less so even than in I worked in multinationals before this. And yeah, looking back, I could have seen, I could have seen a lot of challenges there, um, but actually, looking at the time, I saw a lot of challenges there too. But in tourism, in my experience of it, there's, there's a lot of women involved. It's a lot of women leaders, I certainly never had any challenge, you know, feeling I had access to anything, or my voice wasn't being listened to, or anything like that. So I feel, I feel very, very grateful for that in my life. I think probably, if I were to attach challenges to being female, it's more to, you know, my own personal outlook, having a family and balancing that with a career, tourism involves you in traveling a bit, so that that takes a bit of a bit of managing, but I'm lucky again, I have a supportive environment in that. So I think the challenges more so relate to the work itself.

Dolores Semeraro:

When you look at the vision for what's next for the tourism space. So the tourism space, day by day. Work of today. Where do you think it's taking you?

Tina O'Dwyer:

We mentioned the B Corp certification earlier. We've gone through a process last year of really, you know, working through that, and it's a lot of self inquiry, a lot of it's a lot of codifying what you already do, recognizing what you already do, but also a lot of challenging you to come up to the plate on things that you aspire to, but maybe you're not quite doing yet. And moving forward, and a key phrase for the B Corp is to be a force for good. And I think that's that's probably our guiding principle. Now moving forward, how do we as a business become a force for good, irrespective of tourism? Clearly, our work, you know, we talk by regeneration is it aligns with that as well, about how tourism remains and continues to be and amplifies its ability to be a force for good in the world, but for our own business, it's very much about that we're very into leadership, our own leadership, and supporting others in a leadership session, I think we'll see ourselves Doing more in that space, supporting leadership and supporting Transformative Leadership. And the other thing we've spent a lot of time on, and we'll continue we hope to do better on, is building communities and facilitating that collaboration. I think collaboration is another buzzword in tourism at the minute. I think it's actually quite difficult for people to collaborate in reality. So I think facilitating, facilitating that is another place that I see. And then I think other than that, we're going to see where the road takes us. You know, I think it's a very exciting time in tourism. It's a very, very exciting time. It has been exciting all the time I've been involved in it. So I expect that to continue. And let's, let's see where we grow as it goes, you know, wonderful.

Dolores Semeraro:

Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I love the conversation and also the detours that we've taken and we've explored. So thank you for playing all out and all the best

Tina O'Dwyer:

Dolores. Thank you so much for having me. I loved the conversation as well. Thank you very, very much.

Dolores Semeraro:

Tina, thank you so much for joining me and Tina today on the podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your community, your family, your friends, your network, your colleagues. Link it to your next post on social media. Or if you have a moment, and I'd love that, send me your feedback. I always love to hear from you. See you soon on the next episode of truth behind travel, be well, my friends. You.