Adelaide Region
Sustainable & Regenerative Tourism Workshop
In mid-2023, we facilitated a workshop on the lands of the Kaurna people (Adelaide), in partnership with Tourism Industry Council South Australia (TICSA), for their tourism business members.
TiCSA is the peak body for South Australia’s tourism industry and is a member-based organisation with over 1000 members.
The Live Workshop, titled ‘The Why, What and How of Sustainable & Regenerative Tourism’ demonstrated how infusing regenerative tourism practices into business can mean your product is enhanced, your community supports you, the environment embraces you, your customers love you, and your business thrives.
A wide range of large and small tourism businesses, major event venues, and destination marketing organisations from across South Australia attended and benefitted from the workshop by looking holistically at their business or destination to become more sustainable and regenerative.
Attendees left with great energy and ideas about what they could implement immediately and an understanding of how to develop their businesses into the future.
TiCSA was extremely pleased to bring Tourism Collective’s ‘The why, what and how of running a sustainable and regenerative tourism business’ to SA’s tourism industry in Adelaide. Informed by his deep understanding of the challenges and opportunities faced by small tourism businesses in seeking to be more sustainable, Nic delivered a highly engaging and practical workshop. Attendees left with great energy and ideas about what they could implement immediately and an understanding of how to develop their businesses into the future.
Workshop Details
The Why, What & How of Building a Sustainable & Regenerative Tourism Business
The interactive half-day workshop was facilitated with a combination of inspiring case studies, meaningful conversations, inspiration to develop ‘for good’ visitor experiences, plus practical tips/tools to implement business’s own positive impact journey across 8 focus areas of business:
- Time & Budget
- Customer
- Business Operations
- Waste
- Communications
- Community
- Culture
- Giving Back & Experience Development
Throughout the workshop each business was able to work on their own business positive impact plan by setting short, medium and long-term goals, giving tangible takeaways which could be applied immediately after the workshop and into the future.
Content Themes
- Values & Purpose
- Sustainable & Regenerative Tourism Principles
- Practical Implementation Ideas
Key Outcomes for Tourism Business Owners
- Understand what their business purpose is, and how that aligns with Guest's motivations and behaviours
- Understand what sustainability and regenerative means, and why it makes good business sense
- Confidently start thinking about and mapping their sustainability and regenerative journey, with rock solid, practical steps to get started with both short and longer term actions.
- Understand sustainability is an ongoing journey, not a destination (or a tick box exercise!)
- Support their application/rating improvement of their chosen sustainability accreditations (eg. Ecotourism Australia Strive 4 Sustainability Scorecard, BCorp etc)
- Have a network of likeminded businesses who are on the same journey, so they have the local support to continue learning together
Check out more detail on this learning topic >
Results
Over 30 representatives from tourism businesses and organisations across South Australia attended the live workshop in Adelaide.
At the start and end of the workshop participants were asked “How confident do you feel in your ability to implement regenerative tourism practices in your business”
At start of the workshop survey:
- 7% of the attendees felt completely confident.
- 43% felt slightly confident.
By the end of the workshop, we asked the same question:
- 35% felt completely confident.
- 100% of attendees now felt completely confident, fairly or somewhat confident.
This outcome demonstrated that the content delivered specific, practical skills that enabled confidence within the learning cohort to implement their learnings into their businesses.
This was further reflected in the robust short and long-term goals participants set from their learning during the session.
