Responsible Tourism, Regenerative Tourism: Reflections on the differences and complementarities

The debate has traditionally been about the distinction between sustainable and regenerative tourism. Now responsible tourism and regenerative tourism debates are starting to emerge. I see these terms as contributing complementary insights - but the discussion is often unclear. That is how this contribution started…

I’ve also written this in the form of a letter, framing it as if I was speaking directly has helped frame the issues in a way that might identify points of engagement and open discussion 🙂

First, Understanding the Landscape

Sustainable Tourism operates within existing systems, seeking to minimize harm and maintain current conditions indefinitely. It's essentially trying to engage the tourism businesses in "doing less bad" in their operations while participating in an industrial sector that is fundamentally extractive. No judgement - just acknowledgement that the tourism industry, like any industry sector, is designed to extract resources, produce products and accumulate profits

Responsible Tourism (as articulated by Harold) is about businesses and destinations taking accountability for specific impacts - explaining what they're addressing, why, and what results they're achieving. It's process-focused: identify issues, act on them, report transparently.

Regenerative Tourism (de-centres tourism and views the act of travel and experiencing place from a place-based systems perspective). It represents an actual paradigm shift - not tourism making itself better, or balancing stakeholder interests. Regenerative tourism is fundamentally repositioning itself to participate in the health and flourishing of whole living systems. This means decentring tourism, questioning whether tourism is an industry or whether it could take some other form. it questions its extractive economic foundations and its relationship to people and place, and asks "What does this place need?", not "How can we grow tourism sustainably or responsibly?"

[And a cautionary note here - the term “Regenerative Tourism “ is an oxymoron which I have often talked about in our courses. We can talk about regenerative approach, values and thinking, but tourism by itself cannot be regenerative. Regeneration exists only in a wider systems view of life. I still use the terminology because its widely adopted now, and a “regenerative approach to tourism’ is more cumbersome to say 😃 ]

This is my response to Harold’s paper :

Dear Harold,

Thank you for this overview of regenerative tourism's emergence and your efforts to bring rigour to claims being made. Your concern about greenwashing and the need for transparent, evidenced-based reporting is vital. I'm writing not to dispute your framework, but to explore what might be at stake when we position “Regenerative Tourism is a form of Responsible Tourism, and that Regenerative Tourism is the pinnacle of the Responsible Tourism Movement.” After 30 years of working and researching in and around living systems, regenerative approaches, design with nature, community co-design and systems thinking, I believe regenerative tourism is something fundamentally different. It’s different because it positions itself along different axes including ethics, values, worldview, goals, and theoretical grounding. Below I will try to explain.

A Question of Paradigms

Your paper describes regenerative tourism as "the most ambitious form of Responsible Tourism." However, I wonder if this framing inadvertently keeps us within tourism industry logic when regenerative thinking asks us to step outside it entirely?

Responsible tourism accepts industrial tourism (made up of parts including markets, products, investment, transport and so on). Regenerative tourism questions this mechanistic industrial paradigm. The literature you cite points to this tension. When Bellato et al. talk about "decentring of tourism" and focusing on "the health and wellbeing of whole complex systems, of which tourism is a contributor," they're suggesting something beyond tourism improving itself - they're describing tourism finding its appropriate place within larger system dynamics.

Tourism-Centric vs. Place-Centric

You also include Freya Higgins-Desbiolles' observation - "being tourism-centric is counter to the very ethos of regeneration." This is something I have drawn attention to many times in my own work and teaching. It’s a critical insight in understanding the difference. If regenerative work is already happening in places and in communities, e.g. working on food systems, watershed health, cultural continuity, housing accessibility. So "regenerative tourism" isn't tourism creating regeneration, but tourism decentring itself and learning to participate appropriately in the regenerative work already underway.

From this perspective:

• Responsible Tourism asks: "How can we make tourism better?"

• Regenerative thinking asks: "What does this place need to thrive, and could tourism's presence support that?"

The first question centres tourism. The second centres place.

Theoretical Grounding

You cite Liburd & Duedahl's critique that regenerative tourism has "scant attention to rigorous theoretical anchoring." But I wonder if this is simply the limitation of these writers and their lack of ecological literacies? Regenerative thinking does have theoretical grounding - it's based in living systems theory, ecological principles, and billions of years of nature's own "research and development." When we look to how forests regenerate, how watersheds self-organise, how ecosystems adapt and evolve - we're drawing on the most rigorously tested "theory" available. Citing this issue is compounding misunderstanding.

Regenerative tourism doesn't lack of theory, it's that this theory comes from biology, ecology, and indigenous knowledge systems rather than from tourism studies or business management. It requires tourism academics and practitioners to become students of life systems first, tourism practitioners second.

This is precisely what makes regenerative thinking a paradigm shift rather than a management framework - it demands we learn from and align with nature’s patterns that existed long before tourism, rather than theorising from within tourism industry assumptions.

Different Ethical Foundations

There's also a fundamental ethical difference at play between responsible tourism and regenerative tourism. Responsible Tourism operates from what might be called a contractual or consequentialist ethic. For example:

"I take responsibility for the impacts I create; I report what I do and its effects; I'm accountable for my footprint."

This is transactional. It’s cause and effect, action and remedy, measurable outcomes and transparent accounting. It's necessary and valuable, but it positions tourism as an actor doing things to places, then taking responsibility for those actions.

Regenerative thinking draws from an ethic of care, a relational ethic grounded in the principle of ahimsa (do no harm) and reciprocity. Here, obligation doesn't arise from impacts we've created, but from being-in-relationship with living systems. We care for what we're part of, not because we've harmed it, but because we're embedded within it. This is the ethic that guides Indigenous relationships with land, that underlies regenerative agriculture. It asks:

"How do I tend and nurture the web of relationships I'm within?" rather than "how do I offset the damage I've done?"

It's the difference between accountability after the fact and our attentiveness as a way of being.

The Economic Foundations Question

Your paper doesn't engage with one of the more uncomfortable questions in the regenerative literature: “Can tourism actually be regenerative while embedded in debt-based, extractive capitalism? When Cave & Dredge point to "capitalism's emphasis on resource exploitation, growth and profit" as fundamentally at odds with regeneration, they're suggesting regenerative tourism can't just be about better tourism practices - it requires interrogating tourism's economic model itself. (I’ve written about that recently here and here).

This is where responsible tourism's transparency is necessary but perhaps not sufficient. We can clearly report what we're doing and its impacts while still operating within the economic structures that demand perpetual growth, resource depletion, and that extract and distribute wealth away from places.

What Integration Might Look Like

Rather than positioning regenerative as responsible tourism's pinnacle, what if we saw them as complementary but distinct? For example,

• Responsible Tourism - Essential business practice - taking accountability for impacts, reporting transparently, continuously improving

• Regenerative Practice - A fundamental reorientation - tourism finding its place within living systems, participating in place-based healing and flourishing

Every regenerative tourism initiative should indeed be responsible (transparent, accountable, evidenced). But not all responsible tourism is regenerative - because regeneration requires that deeper paradigm shift toward “being in relationship” with place rather than "doing tourism to" place (responsibly).

Experts and Alternative Sources of Knowing

You've compiled an impressive survey of how regenerative tourism is being used. Could it still be incomplete because most of the regenerative work being done is by practitioners - sleeves rolled up, in the field, quiet, persistent, listening and holding space? Academic papers only observe real regenerative work and they write what they think they see through their lens and training. Regeneration asks us to rethink where expertise lies, it honours nature’s wisdom, it acknowledges place-based wisdom and Indigenous knowledge. These offer different sources of knowing which are incredibly valuable and not “lesser” than academic research.

The Awards Opportunity

Your creation of a regenerative category in the 2026 Responsible Tourism awards is an opportunity to explore these questions together. What if the criteria explicitly named this paradigm difference? Something like:

"We're looking for initiatives where tourism has found its appropriate role within broader place-based regenerative work - not tourism creating regeneration, but tourism participating in living systems' capacity to renew and evolve."

This would distinguish it from responsible tourism that makes places better through tourism initiatives, and point toward tourism that makes itself useful to what places are already doing to thrive.

An Invitation

Perhaps the next step is gathering practitioners working from that place-based paradigm to explore together what this means in practice? Not to create another definition or framework to be adopted, but to learn from places where tourism is genuinely finding new ways of belonging within living systems?

I'm curious about your thoughts on these distinction between tourism improving itself (even ambitiously) and tourism fundamentally repositioning itself within place-based systems of life. Does it matter? What might it change?

So, in sum, I offer some generative questions to explore that might clarify the differences between terms: (I am not sure I got these generative questions right, so feedback is welcome!)

Responsible Tourism Asks:

• How can we make tourism better?

• What impacts have we created and how do we address them?

• How do we get community buy-in for tourism development?

• What can visitors give back and be more responsible?

• What sustainable certifications can we achieve?

• How do we report our impact?

• How do we make our tourism operations more responsible?

Regenerative Thinking Asks:

• What does this place need to thrive, and what is tourism’s contribution?

• How do we participate in living systems that sustain this place without diminishing them?

• Who holds decision-making power about if/how tourism happens?

• What truly matters in this place?

• How can tourism build the community’s capacity to flourish?

• How can we contribute to the health and well-being of our social, economic and ecological systems?

• How do we know if we're truly participating in regeneration?

• Should tourism even be here, or should we reinvent/reframe/reimagine it?

With appreciation,

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The Tourism CoLab is an online tourism education platform and change-making practice specialising in place based, ommunity-led regenerative development. We work with businesses, community groups, governments and NGOs to help transition tourism for a future . We specialise in innovative creative thinking, systems thinking, and radical yet practical actions, through learning, experimentation, and leadership. We are globally connected and worked at the highest levels from our work co-ordinating the Local 2030 Island Network’s Regenerative and Sustainable Tourism Community of Practice, advice to th OECD and European Commission, as well as across local and state governments in Australia, Canada, Mexico and Denmark.

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Citation: The Tourism CoLab (2025). Responsible Tourism, Regenerative Tourism: Reflections on the differences and complementarities. The Tourism CoLab Blog: Field Notes. 1 July 2025. Available at: https://www.thetourismcolab.com.au/post/responsible-tourism-regenerative-tourism-reflections-on-the-differences-and-complementarities