The pandemic has sharply revealed the fault lines in the business model of the travel and tourism industry, but it also offers us an opportunity. Unchained from the past, there is a chance to reset and correct the course of history, to chart a better path based on social and environmental concerns. This crisis may be the time to rethink the strategies of the travel and tourism industry and to develop an innovative model capable of bringing together the environment, culture, and people’s very lives. In 2022, the urgency to innovate and embrace sustainability is even more critical.

How to build a travel and tourism industry fit for purpose

It will be vital to account for the true costs of tourism demand in terms of water, waste, energy, biodiversity, food provenance and pollution, alongside community engagement, economic value and job creation. Establishing the true value and benefits of tourism requires taking a holistic approach across the value.
Caroline Bremner, Head of Travel Research, Euromonitor International

As good practices for reframing the tourism paradigm, two experiences in Europe are mentioned: that of Amsterdam, which announced in 2020 its intention to use the Doughnut Economics model proposed by Kate Raworth, and that of Flanders, which has embraced regenerative tourism, as pioneered by Anna Pollock:

Regenerative tourism is bolder and more inspiring. It aims not just to do less harm, but to go on and restore the harm that our system has already done to the natural world, and by using nature’s principles, to create the conditions of life to flourish. It views wholes and not parts, and is a very different way of looking at the world.
Anna Pollock, Founder, Conscious Travel

Regenerative tourism, our proposal for the future

Fairbnb.coop proposes a model for the travel and tourism industry that differs from the past for its values and practices of democratic governance, as well as for a fair sharing of the created value. These are our main goals:

• people first VS profit first;
• to encourage sustainable tourism, attentive to respect for the environment, which is opposed to mass tourism and, therefore, to Over-tourism;
• to include local communities in the governance of the travel and tourism industry;
• to keep the value of natural beauties and cultural wealth in the territories;
• to protect ecosystems by not encouraging economic over-production, for the benefit of generations to come;
• to support social projects for the benefit of local communities;
• to prioritise and showcase sustainability leading hosts with strong social and environmental credentials;
• to promote close-to-home holidays and circular economy;
• to strengthen mutualism within the network of the cooperative movement to which we belong.

Our model of sustainable and regenerative tourism can be replicated anywhere in the world because it does not emanate from above, but is the result of methods and rules established by the communities that benefit from it. The Fairbnb.coop platform is simply a technological tool available to those who want a change where they live, where they go.