Introducing Regenerative Tourism: Principles and Practices guide was developed to help regions and tourism businesses explore that question with clarity and practical relevance.
Why this resource exists
Many Mediterranean destinations are doing what they were advised to do: improving efficiency, implementing sustainability measures, and refining management tools. And yet, pressure on ecosystems, housing, infrastructure, and social acceptance continues to grow. This raises a different kind of question. Not whether enough effort is being made, but whether the underlying model is still capable of supporting long-term resilience. Tourism remains economically essential for regions and businesses. But the conditions under which it operates are changing faster than traditional approaches/attitudes were designed/adopted to handle climate impacts, resource limits, labour constraints, regulatory pressure, and rising community expectations. In this context, incremental optimisation alone no longer guarantees stability. This publication was developed to help regions, destination management organisations, and tourism businesses navigate this shift with greater clarity. Its purpose is not to promote a new label or compliance framework, but to strengthen how tourism contributes to the long-term health, identity, and viability of territories.
What regenerative tourism means in this publication
The guiding question throughout the theory section is simple:
“How can tourism help this place, and its people, thrive over time?”
This reframing invites decision-makers to look beyond short-term performance indicators and consider how today’s choices influence future capacity, legitimacy, and adaptability. In the document, regenerative tourism is presented as a shift in how tourism is understood and governed. Rather than focusing only on reducing negative impacts, it asks how tourism can actively contribute to the renewal and resilience of destinations: environmentally, socially, culturally, and economically. Economic activity remains essential. Jobs, investment, and viable enterprises still matter. The difference is that financial performance becomes an outcome of strengthening and flourishing places, not the primary driver shaping every decision.
Seeing tourism differently: from parts to systems
A core concept introduced in the theory section is living systems thinking. While the term may sound technical, the implication is practical: tourism does not operate in isolation. It continuously interacts with land, communities, culture, infrastructure, and ecological processes. Past planning approaches often treat these elements separately, optimising individual parts rather than the health of the whole. Over time, this has contributed to fragmentation, short-term efficiency gains at the expense of long-term stability, and unintended trade-offs. Living systems thinking encourages a different perspective: relationships matter as much as outputs, and resilience depends on connection, balance, and care. Adopting this perspective does not provide easy answers, but it can reduce blind spots in strategic decision-making.
Seeing tourism differently: redefining purpose from growth to wellbeing
For many years, tourism success has been measured primarily through volume and revenue indicators. In many destinations, this focus has coincided with environmental stress, rising costs of living, community fatigue, and increased vulnerability to climate impacts. The theory section challenges the assumption that growth automatically equals improvement. It introduces wellbeing and flourishing as complementary reference points for evaluating whether tourism is strengthening or weakening a place over time. This shift encourages new questions to enter planning and policy discussions, not to replace economic performance, but to contextualise it within broader territorial wellbeing and resilience. The theory introduces interconnected roles that describe how responsibility for tourism is shared among people and places. Local communities are positioned as active co-creators of tourism’s future rather than passive beneficiaries. This reframing supports more durable relationships, stronger legitimacy, and clearer expectations of mutual responsibility. Further, the theory section outlines principles that support reflection on how tourism decisions shape capacity, and long-term outcomes; not only what is delivered in the short term. This supports more coherent choices across experience design, governance, investment, and policy alignment.
Making regeneration visible
To support practical reflection, the theory introduces a spiral that helps territories recognise their current trajectory: from degrading dynamics, through impact reduction and restoration, toward renewal and resilience. The spiral reinforces that regeneration is not a label or an endpoint. It unfolds through learning, adaptation, and cumulative change. Progress deepens over time rather than moving in a straight line. This perspective can help organisations avoid unrealistic expectations while maintaining strategic direction.
When this theory becomes most useful
The theory section becomes particularly relevant when regions and tourism actors are:
- revising strategies or masterplans,
- responding to declining social acceptance,
- rethinking performance indicators,
- aligning tourism with climate and wellbeing policies,
- prioritising investments or funding.
Why engaging now matters
When underlying models remain unchanged, pressure continues to build quietly until options narrow and decisions become constrained by external forces rather than shaped proactively. This strategic reframing is only the first step. The second part of the report explores how regenerative thinking translates into concrete governance structures, community engagement processes, experience design, and learning systems in Mediterranean territories. Read our article From Ideas to Action: How Regenerative Tourism Can Be Put into Practice in the Mediterranean to see how regeneration is cultivated in practice and download Introducing Regenerative Tourism: Principles and Practices guide to start your regenerative journey with us.
