Breaking Free of Industrial Thinking
In Part 1 of this two-part series, I explored how industrial thinking has constrained our ability to imagine different futures for tourism. In this post I explore the factors that drive overtourism and explore several places and organisations that are proactively shifting mindset and systems toward a regenerative approach.
Like the monocrops that deplete soil, reduce biodiversity and impact soil health, the industrial approach to tourism has stripped away the richness and complexity of places and diversity in communities. Over the last 20 years of working closely with communities through deep, embedded research and practice, I've observed six consistent patterns in why overtourism emerges:
The Exploitation of Common Pool Resources. At the heart of overtourism lies an industrial mindset that treats public or common pool resources as free resources available for exploitation. These resources include not just physical assets like national parks and community infrastructure, but also invisible resources like culture, stories, community goodwill, hospitality, and willingness to welcome. The tourism sector often takes these for granted, seeing them as part of a destination's intrinsic attraction rather than carefully stewarded community resources. Not surprisingly, communities start to feel taken advantage of and exploited when they are assumed.
Dominance of Industrial Policy. Since the 1980s, tourism policy has primarily served large industry players while overlooking the 80-90% of tourism businesses that are micro, small, seasonal and part-time operators deeply embedded in their communities. The policy toolkit focuses on reducing barriers to access public resources, minimising production costs through subsidies, and growing market access through international marketing. When crises hit, recovery packages aim to return the system to "normal" rather than addressing underlying (and growing) vulnerabilities.
The Myth of Universal Benefits. Industry representatives frequently rely on well-rehearsed claims that "tourism benefits everyone". It's a claim that ranges from overgeneralisation to, dare I say, outright propaganda. These assertions are rarely backed by concrete evidence of net positive impacts on communities and environments. When communities question these so-called benefits when compared to the impacts they live with, their experiences are often dismissed or minimised, creating a form of institutional gaslighting.
Loss of Community Control Over Place Identity. Conflict emerges when the industry assumes the right to brand and market places that communities call home. Marketing campaigns are developed according to creative briefs that prioritise market appeal over community values, often without any meaningful local input. Communities, intensely proud of their homes and their place, watch as their places are marketed inauthentically. No wonder resistance and conflict is triggered by communities feeling that things are out of control.
Absence of Social License. The development of tourism without genuine community consent, defined as the ongoing acceptance and approval from local communities, compounds tensions. When tourism proceeds without transparent decision-making processes or meaningful community consultation, it manifests as community resistance and damaged relationships. Communities feel that tourism is being done to them, rather than with and through them.
Intersection with Broader Community Challenges. Communities are grappling with more than just tourism pressures. They're simultaneously facing housing crises, economic instability, and increasingly frequent climate events. This creates a complex web of interconnected problems as communities approach critical tipping points. Some of the exacerbating factors include:
Contracting government services
Declining volunteerism
Reduced infrastructure funding
Weakened disaster response capacity
Housing affordability and availability
Environmental degradation
Inappropriate or disrespectful visitor behaviour
However, across the world, some places are beginning to break free of this limited thinking and are experimenting with new approaches where value-rich relationships matter more than transactional metrics. It's challenging work. These pioneers often spend considerable emotional energy defending and explaining themselves. Yet their efforts show us what becomes possible when we learn from living systems rather than industrial models.
Living Systems in Practice
When living systems principles are applied, we can begin to transform tourism. But let's also be clear that in the various organisations, communities and places that are changing the system, the expression of these principles differs in order to meet participants where they are at. For example, on Flinders Island, Tasmania, we learned very quickly that the word ‘regeneration’ triggered discomfort with some residents. That said, many came from intergenerational families or had such a love and sense of stewardship for the island, they had been watching the seasons and the cycles and intrinsically understood and had embodied a regenerative worldview. Drawing from skills honed over decades in community engagement, I learned that embodying and learning to talk in ways that build shared understanding is more effective than new language or top-down solutions 'from away'.
I have been fortunate enough to have had access to or worked with hundreds places and organisations across the world over the last 25 years. This work of reframing and reimagining tourism is not new. The case study snippets that I share below show how organisations and communities are creating flourishing systems that nurture both people and place by taking living systems principles and applying them in ways that are appropriate to place.
Hawai'i Regenerative Tourism
In 2024, the State of Hawai'i legally embedded regenerative tourism into its planning framework through Senate Bill 2659, which mandates a shift from traditional tourism to an approach that actively improves quality of life for Hawaii's people while reducing ecological impacts. The legislation prioritises protecting cultural and natural resources while empowering local communities through capacity-building, job training, and positioning local business owners better within tourism's economic value chain. The approach emerged from and is guided by Native Hawaiian voices and values through the 'Āina Aloha Economic Futures movement, demonstrating a commitment to having indigenous perspectives shape tourism's future direction in Hawaii.
Aruba Conservation Foundation: Making Nature the Client
The ACF's began it's transformation during Covid. In an organisational reset, it became obvious that the end goals of the ACF should be serving nature's interests, not the government's shorter-term political agenda. The ACF set out to redesigned itself to serve the end goal of ecological well-being. Their innovative 10-year strategy created a deliberate pathway from responsible tourism (3 years) through sustainable (3 years) and then to regenerative approaches (4 years). By making nature their client, the ACF fundamentally shifted how resources and energy return to ecological systems rather than just being extracted.
Working closely with the destination marketing organisation, ACF was committed to driving deeper systemic change across allied agencies. Their evolution from "see it, feel it, love it" to include "protect it" signals a shift from consumption to stewardship. Their cycle of "observe, give value, create support" builds understanding that feeds into action, while their focus on spiritual connection to nature helps rebuild relationships with place.
This work happened in the context of significant development pressures since the Aruban economy is heavily dependent upon tourism. Yet the ACF worked at multiple levels - from hands-on restoration to policy advocacy. Their approach shows how organisations can catalyse change by simultaneously engaging with community sentiment, business practices, and policy frameworks.
4VI (Vancouver Island): Reframing the DMO as a Social Enterprise
4VI illustrates how destination organisations can transform their fundamental purpose and structure. Their evolution from traditional destination marketing to social enterprise represents a profound shift in how tourism organisations can serve community interests. By redefining success around community wellbeing rather than visitor numbers, they've created new goal posts, and flows of resources and benefits.
Their approach demonstrates the power of working across nested scales - from individual businesses to regional systems. They've created feedback loops that ensure tourism benefits flow back into community initiatives, while their governance model shows how organisations can balance commercial viability with community benefit. Their work inspires us by showing how tourism organisations can evolve beyond marketing to become platforms for community flourishing.
Flinders Island (Tasmania): Co-creating the Islander Way
Flinders Island showcases the transformative power of deep listening, genuine community engagement and co-creation. Their two-year community engagement process demonstrated how presence - truly hearing and honoring diverse community voices - can unlock new possibilities for the island’s relationship with tourism. Rather than imposing solutions, they've created spaces for community involvement and leadership through the establishment of the Furneaux Collective.
Their approach takes a holistic approach, and connects different parts of the system. By linking tourism with circular economy initiatives and community capacity building, they demonstrate how tourism can be woven into broader community development. These projects show how tourism can support rather than extract from community resources, creating regenerative loops that build local resilience. It must also be added that resilience is not about bouncing back, but is couched as genuine freedom for the community to choose its pathway.
Nurturing Creative Ecosystems: FLOAT3909
Like a flourishing garden, FLOAT3909 demonstrates how tourism can nurture cultural and creative flourishing. It's a collection of spaces spread over the postcode 3909 including the Slipway that doubles as a visitor and community centre, the iceworks is makerspace, and the floating artists residence on the magical Lake Tyers. FLOAT demonstrates how community development and tourism create unique experiences, vibrancy, connection, and a compelling curiosity that invites visitors to stop for a while and connect with locals.
Working in a context of contracting services and diminishing opportunities in a remote region, they've built a networked ecosystem that supports artists, environmentalists, and community initiatives. Their approach stands out for its focus on emergent possibilities. Rather than trying to control outcomes, they create conditions where creativity and collaboration can flourish. They work with natural rhythms and cycles, allowing initiatives to grow organically. Their success shows how a social enterprise can function as an ecosystem builder, creating spaces where diverse forms of value can emerge and thrive.
Insights from the Case Studies
Each case study demonstrates different aspects of living systems thinking:
ACF shows how to centre ecological wellbeing and work across multiple system levels; it illustrates that it is possible to change the goals of the system but it requires strong leadership, vision and courage.
4VI demonstrates organisational evolution and nested, connected activation it illustrates that social enterprise is a viable organisational model but, again, strong leadership and vision is present.
The Islander Way exemplifies co-creation and integration with broader community systems; this is an example that has largely developed outside the system and while there has been global recognition there remains considerable resistance to embrace new thinking and ground up activation.
FLOAT illustrates emergent possibilities of holistic ecosystem building using players that are not normally associated with traditional tourism. Artists, creatives and complex thinkers are seeking new ways of providing social and economic opportunities for marginalised groups with new ways of hosting and experiencing place emerging. The FLOAT ecosystem is a distributed network of activities, learning hubs, experimental initiatives that mirror place identity and belonging.
Conclusions: Patterns of Possibility
From these examples its possible to see that, working with living systems principles, we can create new possibilities and reframe tourism so that it serve communities and contributes to flourishing places. When organisations and communities break from industrial thinking, they begin to:
See Differently - Moving beyond marketing and metrics to understand the complex web of relationships that make places unique
Think Differently - Shifting from extraction to regeneration, from control to emergence
Act Differently - Creating conditions for flourishing rather than managing growth
Measure What Matters: Valuing what matters to communities and nature, not just economic returns
For those ready to dive deeper into regenerative approaches, I invite you to join our upcoming Tourism CoLab global cohort course Think Like A Regenerator. Shifting to a regenerative way of thinking requires that we first understand how we think, the guardrails that stop us from thinking differently, and living systems principles. In tourism, we tend to market solutions rather than take a deep dive into learning and reflecting before we pick up the marketing tools. This course has been designed as a global cohort class where we learn how to unlock our individual and collective imagination and develop the thinking needed to create tourism systems that truly serve communities and nature.
To find out more, simply head over to the course page or send us a message!
Resources
Aruba
Nature Today. 2024. FPNA rebrands to the Aruba Conservation Foundation.
Flinders Island
Furneaux Futures Forum. 2025. Furneaux Futures Forum.
Furneaux Collective. 2025. Furneaux Collective.
The Tourism CoLab. 2025. The Islander Way Regenerative Tourism Living Lab. Tasmania. Project collaboration with Designing Tourism.
Hawai'i
Hawai'i Tourism Authority. HTA's Chief Stewardship Officer empashises importance of creating regenerative tourism models. Youtube
HTA. 2025. Qurator.