Local knowledge now: Coastal, marine tourism cannot wait for universities to catch up
Should environmental stewardship be treated as an elective add-on, or is it an essential part of tourism and hospitality?
In response to Jeff Wilks’ assessment of university offerings, Steve Ekstrom argues that coastal destinations cannot afford to wait years for academia to catch up. He reckons the future of coastal and marine travel & tourism depends on immediately equipping frontline workers with the local knowledge to explain, interpret, and protect their home waters.
It’s a “Good Tourism” Insight. (You, too, can write a “GT” Insight.)
Blank looks
Ask someone coming out of a tourism or hospitality programme to explain how a marine protected area affects the whale-watching company down the street, or what ‘carrying capacity’ means when the attraction isn’t a museum or theme park, but a coral reef. There is a decent chance you will get a blank look.
That is neither a criticism of the student nor of the school, but rather points to a larger gap in how we have traditionally prepared people to work in travel & tourism.
We teach marketing, revenue management, guest experience, operations, events, and sales. Yet we do not spend nearly enough time teaching people about the actual places all of that depends upon. It is especially obvious in coastal and marine destinations, where the ‘product’ we are promoting is often a living ecosystem.
Jeff Wilks recently raised this issue in The “Good Tourism” Blog, writing about the opportunities and shortcomings of coastal and marine tourism education. Dr Wilks’ argument got me thinking about something we see regularly in our work with destinations: we have become very good at teaching people how to serve visitors, but we haven’t always taught them enough about the places those visitors came to experience.
And universities are not going to solve that overnight.
A strange disconnect
Think about how much travel & tourism depends on water: beaches, reefs, islands, coastal communities, fishing, sailing, diving, kayaking, wildlife watching, cruise tourism, and waterfront hotels and restaurants. Entire destination economies are built around the idea that people want to experience these places.
Yet marine and coastal literacy is rarely treated as foundational travel & tourism knowledge in the same way we treat customer service, marketing, or hotel operations.
Some of that knowledge lives in marine biology programmes, some in environmental science, and some in travel & tourism and hospitality programmes. Much of it also lives with conservation organisations, park managers, Indigenous communities, charter captains, fishers, and people who have spent their lives working on the water.
The problem is that those worlds do not always meet.
As a result, we can end up with someone who is wonderfully trained in hospitality but knows very little about the ecosystem immediately outside the hotel. That matters, because the person explaining that ecosystem to a visitor is rarely a marine biologist. It is far more likely to be the concierge, the kayak guide, the person working at the dive shop, or the server who gets asked: “Where can we go see the sea turtles?”
Those small conversations can influence what a visitor does next; and whether they experience a place responsibly or unintentionally contribute to the very pressures threatening it.
This is not just a higher education problem
It is tempting to look at this and say universities need to update their curricula. They probably do. But destinations cannot wait for that.
If your destination is marketing pristine beaches, healthy reefs, protected waterways, or abundant wildlife, you are making a promise about the condition of a natural resource. Unlike a logo or an advertising campaign, that resource cannot simply be redesigned next year.
Degraded reefs, polluted beaches, displaced wildlife, and overcrowded natural attractions all directly affect travel & tourism. Eventually, environmental health and economic health become the exact same conversation.
That is why we need to broaden the way we think about tourism and hospitality training in these destinations. Teaching someone how to welcome a visitor is important, but teaching them how to help that visitor understand and respect the place they have come to see is just as essential.
For a coastal destination, stewardship should not be an elective added to hospitality training; it should be an integral part of hospitality itself.
What this can look like
One of the projects I am particularly proud of at Learn Tourism is our work with the Lake Tahoe Destination Stewardship Council and the Tahoe and Truckee chambers of commerce on the Destination Champion programme.
Tahoe is obviously not an ocean destination, but many of the same challenges apply. Millions of people are drawn there because of the lake, the mountains, the trails, the wildlife, and the landscape. Travel & tourism depends on those resources, while creating additional pressure on them.
The training could not simply be: “Here are the attractions and here is how to give good customer service.” Participants learn about the place itself; its ecology, cultural history, and the responsibilities that come with welcoming people into it.
That changes the role of the person taking the training. They are not simply there to tell someone where to eat or what trail to hike; they can help visitors understand how to experience Tahoe. That is a subtle distinction, but an important one.
It is a model that coastal destinations could adapt right now: bring together the people who understand the ecosystem with the people who understand travel & tourism, add the voices of residents and local communities, and then turn that knowledge into something practical enough for hotel employees, tour operators, volunteers, restaurant staff, and residents to actually use.
You do not have to wait for someone to create a new university degree.
Frontline workers are the opportunity
We sometimes make workforce development more complicated than it needs to be.
There are already thousands of people having conversations with visitors every day. They are answering questions, making recommendations, explaining why something is closed, and telling people where they can swim, hike, fish, snorkel, paddle, or watch wildlife. The question is whether we have given them enough information to do that well.
Imagine a coastal destination where a hotel employee does not just know where the best beach is, but can explain why visitors should stay off a particular section of dunes; where a tour guide can explain what a marine protected area actually protects; where a restaurant employee can talk about the connection between local seafood and the community’s fishing heritage; and where someone recommending a wildlife experience also knows how to explain responsible viewing.
That is not turning hospitality workers into scientists. It is giving them enough understanding of the place to become better hosts.
A question every coastal destination should be asking
Look at the language in your own marketing. Do you use words like ‘pristine’, ‘unspoiled’, ‘protected’, ‘wild’, or ‘sustainable’?
If so, ask the people who interact with visitors every day what those words actually mean in your community: why is an area protected, what threatens it, what should visitors know before entering, which behaviours actually make a difference, and what story do we want people to take home with them?
If the people representing the destination cannot answer those questions, that is useful information. It means there is work to do; not five years from now when a university launches a new programme, but now.
The future of coastal travel & tourism will not be protected by marketing the beauty of these places more effectively. It will depend, at least in part, on helping more people understand why they are worth protecting in the first place.
Disclosure: Learn Tourism develops destination education and stewardship programmes, including the Lake Tahoe Destination Champion programme referenced in this article. This piece reflects both our professional experience and my own interest in how education can help travel & tourism communities protect the places their economies depend upon.
What do you think?
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About the author
Stephen ‘Steve’ Ekstrom is CEO of Learn Tourism, a non-profit organisation helping destinations strengthen their communities through travel & tourism education, professional development, and tourism ambassador programmes. He leads partnerships and content strategy for the organisation while travelling North America full-time in what he readily admits is a pretty fancy bus.
Featured image (top of post)
Local knowledge now: Coastal, marine tourism cannot wait for universities to catch up. A Gemini-generated image.
