Phillip Island & San Remo
Sustainable & Regenerative Tourism Mentoring Program
Throughout August-October, we worked in partnership with Destination Phillip Island to design and facilitate a bespoke, layered Sustainable & Regenerative Tourism Mentoring Program for businesses across Millow (Phillip Island), in Victoria.
Renowned for its rugged beaches, enriching landscapes, abundant wildlife encounters, and nostalgic summer getaways, Phillip Island and San Remo has created lasting memories for a diverse mix of visitors from Australia and abroad since the 1880s.
But what really sets this destination apart is the community’s unwavering commitment to environmental regeneration which really forms the essence of their DNA and plays a huge role in how they see success for tourism in their destination.
Given its experience profile, and the vision and values of the community to aspire for a regenerative and sustainable destination for the future, together with Destination Phillip Island, we identified the opportunity to activate a program that supports the industry to elevate and implement a regenerative mindset across business operations and experience design.
Workshop Details
The Why, What & How of Building a Sustainable & Regenerative Tourism Business
The carefully curated workshop was designed to cut through the theory of sustainable and regenerative tourism by providing practical tips & tools backed up by evidence-based case studies for businesses to implement that all lead to tourism for a better future.
We worked closely with Destination Phillip Island to refine the workshop and ensure key areas were addressed and expectations were exceeded.
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 >
Local Impact Learning Tour
After the morning workshop and a networking lunch, we facilitated an interactive half-day learning tour in partnership with Regeneration Projects for the businesses to become fully immersed in some of the positive impact initiatives that were happening across the island.
During the afternoon the group visited inspiring projects and people, making a difference and showing great examples of council and community coming together to achieve common goals.
The group spent time at a beautiful local regenerative farm project which demonstrated a multi-faceted way of tackling and repurposing waste including making a cup of tea from water boiled using food waste-fuelled methane from an impressive biodigester.<
The second location was at The Gap Road Revegetation Site, part of the biolinks project where thousands of trees are being planted through the Phillip Island Landcare group.
Finally, the group walked through Scenic Estate Conservation Reserve (lovingly cared for by the Phillip Island Conservation Society) which is a success story of land buybacks providing habitat for wildlife, and coastal care with the coastline part of a blue carbon project to regenerate mangroves.
The Local Impact Learning tour helped inspire ideas for each business, as well as generate collaborations and conversations for positive impact action both within individual businesses and the wider Phillip Island region.
One on One Mentoring
Over the following months after the live workshop and local impact learning tour, businesses were able to join Nic to dive deeper into their own business in 3 x online mentoring sessions that focussed on goal setting and practical application of sustainable and regenerative Tourism learnings.
The mentoring sessions help structure and prioritise each business's objectives so that they can achieve a long-term and continuous positive impact whilst thriving as a business too.
Results
Workshop
13 representatives from tourism businesses and organisations across the Phillip Island attended the live workshop at The Nobbies Centre.
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:
- All of the attendees felt either slightly or fairly confident (50/50).
By the end of the workshop, we asked the same question:
- 43% felt completely confident.
- 57% 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.
One on One Mentoring
We are still facilitating our individual mentoring sessions (as at early October 2023) and will update this page with results and testimonials once the Program is complete.
