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Dianne Dredge, PhD

Founder, Managing Director of The Tourism CoLab & Place Ecologies

Environmental Design and Planning, Tourism Policy and Place

Ex-Professor and Ex-International Academy for the Study of Tourism member

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The CoLab is Built on Decades of Research, Thinking, and Practice

Systems Approach to Tourism

Dr. Dredge began her career with a strong foundation in environmental planning and design, community engagement, and policy quickly recognising that tourism needed to be understood as part of complex interconnected systems rather than in isolation. Her early work established frameworks for understanding tourism within broader ecological and social contexts. Contributions included:

  • Integration of tourism into planning schemes

  • Place based approaches to tourism

  • Networked governance

  • Place, identity, belonging and the impact of tourism

Living systems in place-based approaches to tourism

Dr. Dredge pioneered the application of living systems thinking to destination management in Douglas Shire, Australia in the 1990s. She developed an approach that recognised destinations as dynamic, interconnected ecosystems rather than static management plans. This work, while rudimentary, demonstrated how living systems thinking could help to integrate tourism into its broader dynamic context. Contributions included:

Policy, Identity and Destination Image 

The publication of "Tourism Planning and Policy" (Dredge & Jenkins 2007) represented a milestone in tourism policy scholarship. This influential textbook established Dr. Dredge as a leading thinker in the field, introducing frameworks that treated tourism policy and planning as iterative, complex systems rather than linear processes. The book was a prescribed text across the world, and the book's enduring impact is evidenced by its continued citation nearly two decades later.

Embedded Community Engagement

Dr. Dredge has pioneered innovative approaches to community engagement that are akin to, but predate, Participatory Action Research (PAR). Her living strategies - dynamic frameworks that evolve with communities - have sought to transform destination planning. Her community-led practice has shown how genuine stakeholder engagement can create resilient tourism systems. Her methodologies enable collective sense-making and shared stewardship. Contributions include:

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Award Winning Curriculum Design and Pedagogy

In 2006, Dr. Dredge received a national citation for "For leadership in the development and delivery of planning education that links theory and practice, and instils in students a passion and enthusiasm for environmental planning". The award recognised her innovative pedagogy in experiential and applied problem-solving 'studio teaching' (nowadays known as a 'design sprint'), and was followed by additional awards for curriculum development. Her pedagogical approach emphasised experiential learning, systems thinking, and collaborative problem-solving – preparing students to work with complexity rather than against it. Contributions include:

Contributions of Social Enterprise in Tourism

In 2011, attending her first Tourism Education Futures Conference in Philadelphia, Dr. Dredge began to voice her concerns that conventional tourism structures were fundamentally incompatible with genuine sustainability within planetary boundaries, and that a shift was required. Along with Professor Emerita Pauline Sheldon, Roberto Daniele and Anna Pollock, she began exploring the potential of new business models such as social enterprise. Contributions included:

Tourism and Economic Restructuring

Recognising the limitations of traditional economic models and the unfolding challenges of the gig economy and casualisation of labour, Dr. Dredge began exploring collaborative and alternative economies in tourism. Several projects with the European Commission on Short-Term Accommodation and the Collaborative Economy, undertaken between 2014 and 2017, marking a period of growing disillusionment with "business as usual" approaches and sustainability narratives. Contributions include:

Tourism Policy Systems

Over 20 years in higher education, Dr Dredge advanced research and policy analysis adopting a particular interest in institutional and stakeholder relationships, tourism governance, structures and flows of power and interest. Her work with the OECD on policy complementarities and her "archeology of tourism policy knowledge"  (with Jamal, 2016) were major contributions to the field. Her foresight in identifying paradigm shifts, in exploring liminal moments of learning, and in anticipating the regenerative shift was well before mainstream research took an interest. Contributions include:

Founding The Tourism CoLab in 2018

The Tourism CoLab was established in 2018 as a social enterprise and represents the culmination of decades of thinking, advocacy, research, practice and leadership. The timing proved prescient – launching just as the concept of regenerative tourism began emerging globally around 2020, spearheaded by her friend and colleague Anna Pollock with whom she had been collaborating since 2012. Dr. Dredge had been working with regenerative principles long before the terminology became widespread. Contributions include:

The Tourism Colab and Place Ecologies

While "regenerative tourism" only entered mainstream discourse around 2020, Dr. Dredge's work had been building toward this paradigm shift for decades. Her ecological thinking, complex systems practice, and head-heart-gut intelligence approach positioned her as a natural leader in regenerative development and tourism.​

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OUR LEGACY

​Throughout this journey, there has been a consistent commitment to understanding tourism as part of living systems. Dr Dredge's work has been generously shared and demonstrates remarkable foresight – anticipating paradigm shifts before they occurred and developing frameworks that have proven increasingly relevant as global challenges intensify. The Tourism CoLab represents the natural evolution of decades of systems thinking applied to tourism's relationship with people and place.

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