Why build well-being into destination resilience and tourism recovery?

Much has been writ­ten about includ­ing host com­munit­ies in des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment and tour­ism devel­op­ment decision-mak­ing, but how would one go about meas­ur­ing con­tent­ment, well-being, or even hap­pi­ness, on an ongo­ing basis? In this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Paul Rogers of “GT” Insight Part­ner Plan­et Hap­pi­ness presents a solution. 

Pri­or to the onset of the COVID-19 glob­al pan­dem­ic, issues sur­round­ing over­tour­ism and the sector’s con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change were argu­ably the biggest chal­lenges facing the travel & tour­ism industry. Should we be hon­est and recog­nise that plan­ners and policy-makers (and the industry gen­er­ally) were strug­gling to respond to these big-tick­et items; and that a key ele­ment of this struggle is the effect­ive­ness of stake­hold­er engage­ment pro­cesses? How do we over­come defi­cien­cies in travel & tour­ism man­age­ment sys­tems to make them more pur­pose­ful and efficient? 

Can more inclus­ive and effect­ive sys­tems be designed to: 

• relieve pres­sure on host com­munit­ies, nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al assets, and attractions; 
• deliv­er great­er equity in the dis­tri­bu­tion of tour­ism dol­lars; and 
• reduce the sector’s car­bon emis­sions, which threaten not just the live­ab­il­ity of des­tin­a­tions but life on the plan­et as we know it? 

These are all huge tasks.

Movers and shakers in this diverse industry, which serves as an engine of loc­al and nation­al trans­form­a­tion, recog­nise that host com­munity, industry, and gov­ern­ment engage­ment is needed to address these chal­lenges. Des­tin­a­tion solu­tions to over­tour­ism can only be found if gov­ern­ments and busi­nesses act­ively work with host com­munit­ies to bet­ter under­stand the extent to which their qual­ity of life is affected by vis­it­or flows and beha­viour (and related effects such as inflated prop­erty prices, for example). In short, innov­at­ive and more action-ori­ented stake­hold­er pro­cesses are sorely needed.

While des­tin­a­tions such as Ams­ter­dam, Bruges, and Thompson Okanagan have been lead­ing the way with res­id­ent out­reach, it might be said there are too few “off-the-shelf”, recog­nis­able meth­ods avail­able to destinations. 

Should an access­ible and enga­ging pro­cess be avail­able, ima­gine for a moment what it might look like. Owing to the fact that tour­ism is a people-focused industry, is there mer­it in look­ing to host com­munit­ies for answers, with their qual­ity of life as a core motiv­at­or? After all, a great place to live is a great place to visit.

Before sug­gest­ing where solu­tions may lie, we make the point again that pri­or to COVID-19, sys­tem­ic weak­nesses with tour­ism man­age­ment pro­cesses led to over­tour­ism as busi­nesses clam­oured for profits, gov­ern­ments cel­eb­rated ‘USPs’ and ‘KPIs’ (mainly vis­it­or arrivals and rev­en­ues), and vis­it­ors sought their next envi­able selfie. In this mix of pri­or­it­ies, host com­munit­ies have been slowly but surely disenfranchised. 

Hence, a fun­da­ment­al goal and start­ing point in the design to build back bet­ter must be to pos­i­tion host com­munity well-being front and centre. Indeed, devel­op­ing tour­ism to sup­port host com­munity well-being is sys­tem­at­ic­ally embraced and glob­ally advoc­ated in the GSTC Cri­ter­ia, the ASEAN Tour­ism Stand­ards, and more besides. 

But what does this term well-being actu­ally mean? 

Well-being!? What’s that?

Fol­low­ing the August 2011 sign­ing of UN Res­ol­u­tion 65/309, “Hap­pi­ness: towards a hol­ist­ic approach to devel­op­ment” and the “High-Level Meet­ing on Hap­pi­ness and Well-being: Defin­ing a New Eco­nom­ic Paradigm” chaired by Sec­ret­ary Gen­er­al Ban Ki-moon, at the UN in NYC in April 2012, much pro­gress has been made in this policy arena, includ­ing defin­ing and meas­ur­ing well-being. 

New Zealand’s Treas­ury for example, uses well-being screen­ing tools to alloc­ate depart­ment­al budgets and all EU mem­ber coun­tries are engaged in vari­ous forms of hap­pi­ness meas­ure­ment and policy mak­ing. Moreover, the col­lec­tion and ana­lys­is of cent­rally-col­lated, object­ive well-being data under­pin annu­al World Hap­pi­ness Reports pro­duced by the UN and the World Hap­pi­ness Coun­cil. 

While this is all very encour­aging, it’s worth not­ing that inform­a­tion in these high-level approaches often stays with policy-makers and is rarely com­mu­nic­ated down to the grass-roots where news of its rel­ev­ance and pur­pose is sorely needed to encour­age engage­ment in loc­al devel­op­ment issues. This is where sub­ject­ive indic­at­ors of well-being can help and we use the example of the Hap­pi­ness Index to explain further.

The Happiness Index

The Hap­pi­ness Index sur­vey, used by Plan­et Hap­pi­ness (a tour­ism and big data pro­ject) is avail­able on-line in 25 lan­guages and count­ing. An OECD-recog­nised best-prac­tice meas­ure of well-being, the sur­vey takes 10 – 15 mins to com­plete. At the end, sur­vey-takers receive a one-page score-card pro­fil­ing their well-being scores across 11 domains with all oth­er sur­vey-takers. The score-cards: 

• spark con­ver­sa­tions between fam­il­ies, friends, and work col­leagues about the strengths and defi­cien­cies of their scores; 
• intro­duce sur­vey-takers to a defin­i­tion of well-being and how to meas­ure it; and, 
• provide trac­tion for grass-roots under­stand­ing of, and engage­ment with, the tour­ism and des­tin­a­tion well-being agenda. 

We see this as an excit­ing oppor­tun­ity. When the Hap­pi­ness Index is deployed in tour­ism des­tin­a­tions, one-page score cards of aggreg­ated indi­vidu­al res­ults are pro­duced provid­ing a snap-shot of a destination’s well-being. This allows tour­ism stake­hold­ers to con­sider the highs and lows of the destination’s well-being (by neigh­bour­hood, if needed) and determ­ine what policies, pro­jects, and actions are needed to improve the qual­ity of life of host com­munit­ies (and tar­get neigh­bour­hoods). It allows plan­ners to ask, and res­id­ents to answer this ques­tion: How should the tour­ism sec­tor be struc­tured and organ­ised to avoid over­tour­ism and strengthen des­tin­a­tion well-being? 

Viewed in this way, this explains why the mis­sion of Plan­et Hap­pi­ness is to focus the atten­tion of all tour­ism stake­hold­ers on the well-being agenda; and to use tour­ism as a vehicle for devel­op­ment that demon­strably strengthens des­tin­a­tion sus­tain­ab­il­ity and the qual­ity of life of host communities. 

Plan­et Hap­pi­ness’ peer-reviewed mis­sion and pro­cess pro­poses an import­ant shift in the gov­ernance approach to tour­ism devel­op­ment. But is it suf­fi­ciently rel­ev­ant to inspire des­tin­a­tion man­agers who are seek­ing to recov­er from a glob­al pan­dem­ic like no oth­er, with more than 100 mil­lion travel & tour­ism jobs lost around the world? 

The quick answer is “no”. While the interest Plan­et Hap­pi­ness has garnered in 2020 is grow­ing, des­tin­a­tions are first and fore­most focused upon keep­ing busi­nesses afloat and, where pos­sible, their employ­ees com­pensated. But let’s not be deterred. 

One of the sil­ver lin­ings on the dark cloud of COVID-19 is the impetus it has giv­en to pause and recon­sider the future we want to build. Giv­en tour­ism is an extremely com­pet­it­ive industry with a grow­ing social and envir­on­ment­al con­scious­ness, des­tin­a­tions have to deeply con­sider their repu­ta­tion and brand­ing. With this comes the need to look to great­er sus­tain­ab­il­ity to advance their com­pet­it­ive edge.

Des­tin­a­tion man­agers (busi­nesses and gov­ern­ments) have to think deeply about many issues: car­bon emis­sions; clean­er tech­no­lo­gies; trans­port plan­ning; recyc­ling and waste man­age­ment; plastics; food waste; min­im­ising eco­nom­ic leak­age and max­im­ising income for loc­als (espe­cially in agri­cul­tur­al eco­nom­ies); tar­get­ing the right vis­it­ors; and cre­at­ing per­son­al­ised tours, excur­sions, and vis­it­or exper­i­ences that bring loc­als and vis­it­ors togeth­er to cre­ate those mem­or­able moments that stay in our minds forever. 

Achiev­ing all this and more means design­ing and driv­ing a sys­tem that pro-act­ively engages not just mul­tiple gov­ern­ment depart­ments and tour­ism busi­nesses of all scales and dimen­sions, but also industry employ­ees and des­tin­a­tion residents. 

Circle of trust

This brings us nicely back to the value and pur­pose of build­ing well-being met­rics into des­tin­a­tion resi­li­ence and recov­ery. Among oth­er bene­fits, this pro­cess helps to:

• build trust, align­ment, and syn­er­gies between all stakeholders; 
• bring new ideas into product and excur­sion devel­op­ment (often around her­it­age, the arts, and culture); 
• encour­age stronger link­ages between tour­ism busi­nesses and host communities; 
• gen­er­ate a wide array and stock of story-lines to use in brand­ing and mar­ket­ing strategies; and 
• cre­ate trac­tion for the intro­duc­tion by loc­al and nation­al gov­ern­ments of well-being policies as part of their com­mit­ment to the UN’s Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals. 

In doing all this and more, the pro­cess sup­ports the design and deliv­ery of qual­ity places to live and vis­it that we all want to see, enjoy and be inspired by. 

Look­ing ahead, isn’t it inev­it­able that tour­ism and des­tin­a­tion well-being will become stronger bed-fellows? 

If you’re inter­ested to learn more, find me at Plan­et Hap­pi­ness where we offer afford­able and access­ible tools and resources to drive and deliv­er a pro­gress­ive agenda.

What do you think about Plan­et Hap­pi­ness’ philo­sophy and approach? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): A Thong­drel, a reli­gious image com­posed of sev­er­al lay­ers of silk depict­ing the Guru Rinpoche sur­roun­ded by holy beings; dis­played once a year as the high­light of a Bhu­tanese tsechu (reli­gious fest­iv­al). Image by Paul Rogers.

About the author

Paul Rogers is a tour­ism-for-devel­op­ment prac­ti­tion­er focused on policy and plan­ning. With 20 years’ exper­i­ence as a seni­or tour­ism advisor to nation­al and loc­al tour­ism organ­isa­tions, he has worked in more than a dozen coun­tries in South and South­east Asia, Africa, and Aus­tralia. In recent years Paul has under­taken assign­ments for the World Bank, ADB, FAO, DfID, UNDP, UNWTO, USAID, ICIMOD, Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment, Kew Gar­dens, Isti­tuto Oikos, SNV (Neth­er­lands Devel­op­ment Organ­isa­tion), and WWF. 

Build­ing on his sig­ni­fic­ant exper­i­ence, Dr Rogers co-foun­ded Plan­et Hap­pi­ness, a pro­ject of the Hap­pi­ness Alli­ance. The Hap­pi­ness Alli­ance is a US-registered not-for-profit that meas­ures the hap­pi­ness of res­id­ents liv­ing in World Her­it­age sites and bey­ond. Plan­et Hap­pi­ness’ mis­sion is to “focus the atten­tion of all tour­ism stake­hold­ers on the well-being agenda; and use tour­ism as a vehicle for devel­op­ment that demon­strably strengthens des­tin­a­tion sus­tain­ab­il­ity and the qual­ity of life of host communities”.

Paul would like to thank his col­league Ms Chi Lo for read­ing and com­ment­ing on early drafts of this “GT” Insight and con­trib­ut­ing to its final form.