“Hopefully these solutions are not just a hundred solutions, but a hundred tiny blueprints or at least a hundred tiny starting points for somebody to make a difference in their area.” — Sara Raymond de Booy 

Are you wondering how travel can truly make the world a better place? At Destination Think, we know the solutions to many of the most pressing challenges facing the tourism industry and the world already exist and can be implemented now. That’s why we spent months researching the best solutions leading up to World Tourism Day 2024, when we published 100 Travel Innovations.

100 Travel Innovations brings together insights from travel destinations and organizations in 35 countries across six continents, spotlighting real-world solutions for issues like climate resilience, biodiversity, and cultural preservation. By sharing their experiences, these leaders aim to inspire both travellers and industry stakeholders to create a more sustainable future for travel.

In this episode, Todd Montgomery, professor at Oregon State University and Director of the Sustainable Tourism Lab, and Sara Raymond de Booy, Editorial Director at Destination Think, discuss proven examples of driving positive change in the travel industry. Todd, an advisor to the project, and Sara, who led the research, discuss how these ideas were curated and the impact this initiative aims to have. 

They review a few solutions from 100 Travel Innovations that highlight sustainability and climate action, like Ecocitex, a social enterprise in Santiago, Chile, that transforms recycled clothing into new textiles without using water, establishing a circular economy model that allows global entrepreneurs to source sustainable fabric. They discuss Sustainable Solano in Fairfield, California, which educates residents on converting their yards into drought-resistant food forests that promote biodiversity, opening these gardens to visitors to inspire others to adopt similar practices. They also reference Historic Environment Scotland (HES) which engages citizens in monitoring the impact of climate change on heritage sites, showcasing the role of community involvement in preserving cultural landmarks while addressing the range of climate challenges.

This episode, you’ll learn about:

• The 100 Travel Innovations project that showcases existing innovations in sustainability and regenerative travel, demonstrating the power of collaboration among destinations globally.
• How the innovations were selected and curated based on geography, category and scale.
• A few of the innovations that stand out to the team who worked on it. 
• Challenges and opportunities for taking the research and project further.

Subscribe to Travel Beyond through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast player.

Show notes

100 Travel Innovations —  A collection of 100 global solutions that showcase how travel is working to protect the planet, support communities and create meaningful change.

Ecocitex — A social enterprise that sells 100% recycled textile products through more than 250 women-led businesses across Chile.

Historic Environment Scotland (HES) — The lead public body established to investigate, care for and promote Scotland’s historic environment.

Oregon State University Sustainable Tourism Lab  — A research hub that provides data and services to help tourism organizations balance visitor and community needs.

Sustainable Solano — A grassroots movement to promote ecologically regenerative, economically and socially just communities.

Episode transcript

Sara Raymond de Booy: A lot of the thinking behind this is that solutions are already out there. We just really need to know where to look to uncover them. 

Todd Montgomery: You don’t do this just to share information. You do this to hopefully make an impact. How do you see that impact evolving? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah, so in one way, hopefully these solutions are almost not just 100 solutions, but 100 tiny blueprints, or at least 100 tiny starting points for somebody to make a difference in their area.

David Archer: Welcome back to Travel Beyond, where we partner with leading destinations to bring you inspiring solutions to the greatest challenges facing communities and the planet. I’m David Archer from Destination Think, recording from Dajingids, British Columbia, which is a village in Haida Gwaii, the territory of the Haida Nation.

On this show, we’re actively looking for the best examples of efforts to regenerate economies, communities, and ecosystems. And we definitely have examples to share with you today because we’re going to dive into an incredible initiative that we launched on World Tourism Day last week known as 100 Travel Innovations.

It’s a collaborative effort made possible by destinations and organizations from around the world who all believe that some of our most pressing environmental, economic, and social challenges can be solved through collaboration and sharing. And that plenty of these solutions are already out there. We just need to know where to look.

So we’ve provided a place to look for a good chunk of the year. My co producer, longtime colleague, and sometimes co host Sarah Raymond Dubois worked with Todd Montgomery, the director of the sustainable tourism lab at Oregon state university, and a team of writers to curate research and document 100 innovations related to tourism.

These are innovations that can help shape our communities and the planet for the better. All of the initiatives they selected to highlight already exist and have results that anybody can learn from. You can access all the 100 innovations right now at innovate.destinationthink. com. And this is just the beginning because Sarah and the team are planning to build on this project and continue to share solutions from around the travel industry.

In this recorded segment that I’m about to share, And which originally aired at the 24 hours of travel innovation event from world tourism day. You’ll hear Todd and Sarah discuss the significance of 100 Travel Innovations, how the ideas were curated, and, uh, What impact this initiative aims to have on both the tourism industry and travelers alike.

Here we go.

Todd Montgomery: Hello and welcome to this 24 Hours of Travel Innovation event hosted by Destination Think, uh, my name is Todd Montgomery. I’m professor at Oregon State University and also the director of the Sustainable Tourism Lab. Today’s event is a part of an international effort to unite the travel industry by sharing innovations in sustainability and regenerative travel.

The session is all about a project led by Destination Think called 100 Travel Innovations. I’ve been involved as a project as an advisor, but my guest today is Sarah Raymond de Booy from Destination Think. Welcome Sarah. And she is leading this project. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yes. Hello. Nice to meet you. Finally. 

Todd Montgomery: Yeah, we have met a lot on email.

Sara Raymond de Booy: So we’ve talked a lot on email, but we’ve never met in person. Face to face in this format before. 

Todd Montgomery: Well, this is great. Well, it’s pleasure, pleasure to see you in person and you know, let’s just, let’s just jump right into it. Uh, can you tell me about your role and experience at Destination Think? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yes. So at Destination Think, I’m editorial director and what that has me doing is going around right now, curating all these stories, researching solutions that are tourism led or tourism adjacent that can help make the world a better place and using a lot of the storytelling that we’ve been very well practiced in, in the last, I’ve been with Destination Think for about, you know, 12 years. So using all the storytelling that we’ve practiced with clients around the world and kind of turning that around and using it as a way to educate travelers and the industry on ways that travel can help to make the world a better place.

Todd Montgomery: Perfect, perfect. So tell me a little bit more. What is 100 Travel Innovations and how have you been involved in the project? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yes, so 100 Travel Innovations, pretty self explanatory, 100 solutions that are either within the travel industry or adjacent to that are working together to help make the world a better place.

And a lot of the thinking behind this is that solutions are already out there. We just really need to know where to look to uncover them. Like all of these great things are happening in destinations around the world, but how can we put them all together to see what’s happening? Another thought that we’ve all had over at Destination Think, um, over the past little while is that travel is perfectly positioned to kind of bring these solutions to light. So not only does tourism touch so many aspects of society, if you think of a hotel, you’ve got waste, you’ve got water, you’ve got energy, you’ve got the, you know, the walkability and livability of the community. But we’re as DMOs and people who work with DMOs were also very well seasoned storytellers.

So the combination of that gives us a unique advantage to really get those stories out there. Um, hopefully in a way that is digestible to whether it’s consumers or business or anyone. And we also know like travelers are more open minded when they’re out exploring the world. Um, and there are plenty of ways that that DMOs and their communities are already working to improve the communities they live in, the planet, the environment that they depend on for tourism.

And so we really wanted to help bring some of those stories to the surface. 

Todd Montgomery: Perfect. And you, you’ve kind of touched on this question, but you know, why is gathering and presenting these innovations and really in one place? Uh, so important. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: That is really important because we feel like if we can make these things easy to find, it makes them easier to adopt.

And if we can put them in a way that we’re taking, taking and translating them almost, it’s giving, it’s giving. Anybody who reads it, the opportunity to easily digest that content. So it’s taking a lot of voices from around the world and trying to position them and I guess, display them in a way that makes sense for anybody to read and be interested in.

And then when you get that spark from these that inspires you, you can go off and do what you need to do with it to help to improve your community or the environment around you. 

Todd Montgomery: Yeah, for sure. And, you know, just my own involvement, just reading these, it was, I was struck by the diverse solutions, how, how different they were, but also how they were coming from all over the world.

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah, they are. They, we have sponsors from all over the world who helped us to make this happen. And they, we were really able to lean on them for connections to organizations in their destinations that were making these changes and then, you know, They were able to give us ideas and we could figure out how these things all intersected with different topics.

So that was definitely a global, a global effort. 

Todd Montgomery: And what were some of those organizations that were involved? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah, so we had, um, a group of sponsors, um, those are, there’s too many to name. I know that they are all listed on 100 Travel Innovation sites. So I might just, uh, kick us over there afterward to take a look.

Todd Montgomery: Yeah. No, perfect. Perfect. And, and what, I mean, just, just the kind of big picture, you know, you don’t do this just to share information. You do this to, to hopefully make an impact. How do you see that impact evolving? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. So in one way, hopefully these solutions are almost not just a hundred solutions, but a hundred tiny blueprints, or at least a hundred tiny starting points for somebody to, you know, to make a difference in their area.

Also, the impact we’re hoping to have is if travelers and a lot of these are written where there’s kind of the why for travelers of why should you care about this? Why should this impact your travel decision making or how you travel? Um, but we want to make it possible for travelers to make better informed decisions about, and be more aware of their impact while they’re traveling as well.

I know behavior shifts isn’t what’s going to get it, get us all out of this, but, um, if we can approach it from lots of, lots of angles as well. Um, Another reason, impact, another impact we’re trying to have is to kind of remove the intimidation from some of these really complex topics. So if you’re looking at something that’s very straightforward, but it ladders up into all these complex issues, you kind of see there’s that tangible piece of the puzzle that you can understand and see how you fit into it, give people tools to, to make decisions on, you know, how they, how they want to improve wellbeing or their community and, and the planet.

Todd Montgomery: Yeah, that’s a great point. Just, you know, before we, we started the actual session and we were just talking offline and I mentioned just with some of the groups that we work with in the lab is sometimes you can just feel a little bit overwhelming and seeing these examples, some small, right? And some really big, it just kind of gives you that, that motivation to get it going.

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah, exactly. 

Todd Montgomery: I mean we’re talking a lot about the industry, but do you think travelers will benefit from this as well? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Oh, definitely. I think the industry and DMO benefit is that they can easily Identify with other DMOs on this list, um or in this list I guess directory of 100 solutions and see what other people are doing and modify that for their own needs and use it as inspiration.

And then I think that it, you know, it does help travelers to make informed decisions and also encourages them to support those destinations and those organizations within the destinations when they travel. And maybe if something shifts where you’re going on a beach vacation, but you’re kind of thinking, okay, what’s off the beach and what Like, what’s off my normal travel routine that can help me better benefit the place that I’m enjoying myself at in my vacation?

You know, is there something I can do to help reduce my waste? Is there something I can do to more support communities that need my help? Um, it doesn’t have to be what your whole vacation is, but just taking those little steps to make sure that you’re thinking of the community, I think, is definitely a way that travelers can benefit from this.

Todd Montgomery: You know, how did, how did you find these innovations? Like what were you researching? Were people coming to you? Can you talk a little bit about that? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah, well, you were on the, you were on one end of that, just getting emails from me all summer. But, uh, these came from, from all over. It was definitely made possible by our sponsors and so on with.

The sponsors, the groups that we’re with, they’re collaborating together, kind of putting that competition aside and using this to take a stand on that travel needs to change. There are already solutions out there. Here’s how we want to encourage others to do that. So a lot of the time we had already been in discussions with some of these sponsors about.

Great things happening in their community. So we were able to really lean on them to bring those to the surface. Um, beyond that, we definitely sourced our stories through a lot of desktop research, word of mouth with the team. There’s always a lot of slack conversations of great solutions that people encounter.

And everybody based on their own interests has their own social media pages that they follow or news channels. So just leaving this to one person, wasn’t going to be the most practical way to do it. We want inspiration coming from all different sides. We’re also guided by our own curiosity. That was a bit more tied in with word of mouth and leaning on my, my colleagues and, um, just different stories that I see pop through.

And a lot of things, you know, people know that you’re interested in this, whether or not they work in tourism, they start, um, to send things through as they see them. I should also make sure, this seems like a good time to note it, that this is not a comprehensive list of the 100 tourism solutions or innovations out there.

It’s really just the beginning. It’s not even, it’s not a top 100. There’s no ranking. It’s not an award. Um, but it’s, as you mentioned, it’s almost overwhelming to think about how many solutions are out there. So we’ve barely scratched the surface with this. And the more I research, the more I realize How much more is out there that we haven’t uncovered time for me to have the overwhelm that you mentioned.

So, um, we also have a database that we pulled some of these from right now. We’re at about 500 different solutions. Only, you know, 100 of them are on the site. So somewhere between five and 700 actually, um, is what we’ve been collecting over the past. I’d want to say at least a year and a half, um, of just things that we encounter and find and want to bookmark for later.

So we use those for inspiration in a variety of ways. 

Todd Montgomery: That’s great. And I, like, like you were mentioning, so much information was out there. So how did you, how’d you kind of whittle down this list list? What kind of criteria did you use? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah, so balancing it was tricky, so what we came up with is three different ways that we wanted to organize things, scope of them, we didn’t want everything to be super large.

If it’s you or me, we don’t have an airport in our backyard that we can build a, you know, a solar farm in, um, but we could maybe, you know, make some changes in our own garden or something like that. So we have three categories of scale. There’s business, infrastructure, and community. Kind of a lot of overlap to community and business don’t have to be completely isolated from each other geography.

We wanted to get a good, a good balance, which I know we’ll probably chat more about in a bit. And then the topic we had 8 different categories that we wanted to have some sort of. Equal representation between on as this is just 100 solutions right now, that balance is going to shift over time. But those were the three that we were trying to fill in some blanks.

Okay, we’re a bit light from this part of the world or we’re a bit light in this topic. Then that’s what would drive some research into other areas. 

Todd Montgomery: And just in my own review, the ones that I loved is when it touched all those three areas where it touched like the environmental, the community, and then just kind of that economic piece and where there, there were incentives on each of those.

And those are always really exciting. And once again, you probably received an email like, this is awesome. Like, this is a really, really cool idea. So let’s jump right into it. What kind of innovations did you uncover? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Well, we’ve uncovered a lot. I now know a lot more than I did before I started this, so, um, I don’t quite know where to begin, but we uncovered Stories all the way from how to trap invasive species in the mountains of New Zealand and build barriers between different regions, um, all the way through to facts about garbage that I think are very important to know, but I didn’t before, like how many, how much emissions come from just decaying organic matter and, and why that’s an issue for communities.

Learned a lot about how climate is affecting certain parts of the world, whether it’s, you know, a castle in Scotland over to, um, mangroves in Cambodia that are having trouble because they’re, there’s overfishing issues combined with climate issues. And, um, and it gets to be, uh, quite, quite a bit of a problematic mess.

So yeah, there we uncover, uncovered quite a bit and. You know, as I mentioned, not even scratch the surface. I feel like, 

Todd Montgomery: yeah, and you touched on this a little bit as well, but you know, talk about the, the, all the, the geography and all the different places from what I saw were some very small destinations to some major cities worldwide with geography.

Sara Raymond de Booy: What we really wanted to do was make sure that there was a balance as much as we could, but there’s a bit of a paradox where 75 percent of the world’s population lives in the global South. And 80 percent of the wealth is in the North and the decisions that are made in the North end up, you know, affecting the South.

So we also knew at the same time that our audience was going to be from the global North and if that’s where 80 percent of the wealth is, then that’s where a lot of the easier opportunities with capital to make these changes are. So we were trying to balance that a fair bit. And we know that the choices that are made up North are going to affect the global South too.

So where we landed was a breakdown that will shift over time, but as of right now, we had about 40 percent from North America, largely due to the people we’d already been in conversations with and the information that was out there, um, that could be shared with people and easily implemented throughout the global North.

30 percent of the stories come from the global South. And the rest are divided up between Australia, New Zealand and Europe. And as we go on, those numbers will shift. But we wanted to make sure that there was a good balance of, of topics from all over the world in all shapes and sizes. And I think even some of the global South at the beginning, we were kind of like, okay, well, there’s not as much, you know, published on these.

It’s a little bit harder to find, but. There’s even some tactics from Senegal that we came across that I’m planning to use in my garden in the spring, so that wasn’t actually true, like these things can be very globally relevant, even if the issue is different, you know, I don’t want to have to use my irrigation as much, but in Senegal, they need to do interesting, drought resistant gardening because they’re trying to prevent the Sahara from, you know, moving into the Sahel.

Todd Montgomery: And, uh, so, you know, who invented this? Come from, like, tourism related businesses? Does this come from community groups? Where did all these ideas, uh, come from? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Definitely spread all around. So, we have some initiatives in here that are DMO led. And other initiatives that are community grassroots initiatives that the DMO is just really proud of, or the destination leaders are very proud of.

So, um, that really comes from, from all across, I’d say everything is tourism related or at least strongly tourism adjacent. The one caveat there would be, there are potentially some destinations that you don’t necessarily think of as being prime tourist destinations right now, but we wanted to make sure to include them because the work that they’re doing.

Is helping to potentially build that tourism infrastructure for later, um, should the time come in 10 years, they might be really, you know, really popular places to go. And if they’re not doing the work now, then they’re not really going to have those environmental assets. So, um, there are some more remote areas that might be like, Oh, I didn’t quite think of that, but it’s, they’re doing, they’re doing a lot of interesting things now that anybody can learn from, 

Todd Montgomery: And how did, I mean, so many, so many categories, you mentioned a database with 500, how do you even then begin to categorize those?

Sara Raymond de Booy: This was another long conversation. Um, I worked pretty closely with Tyler Robinson, who works on our strategy team. And, um, well before this project began, Tyler and I were working together to find out how his, um, Strategy frameworks might align with the type of content that we were creating. And the reason was if Tyler’s going through and coming up with, you know, challenges in certain areas and is looking for KPIs of how destinations can track their progress toward these, are there any real life examples that he could lean on as best practice?

And at the same time, as I’m reading through all of these stories and, you know, kind of, uh, getting a sense of everything, a master of none of these topics, I would want to also lean on Tyler. For advice on, you know, what here I have this story, like, what’s the, what are the issues with the surrounding the story?

What can it teach us? Um, what are some of the takeaways that I should be educating the audience about? So we came up with eight categories. We have many more in the background, but they’ve been distilled down to eight, um, all associated with UN SDGs. And those were, I’m going to have to refer to this, this note I’ve written because I’m definitely going to forget one biodiversity, climate resilience.

Cultural Preservation, Equality, Responsible Tourism, Community Prosperity, Modernization, and Job Creation. And so, as we’ve started filing these stories into the categories, uh, we’re noticing a lot overlap, but we’ve tried to file the stories into the one that really sticks out for. But as you mentioned before, a biodiversity story doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not a story about equality and it’s not a story about job creation.

So, there’s, there is a lot of overlap. Yep. 

Todd Montgomery: No, that’s, that’s helpful. So we’ve sort of teased about this hundred list. Why don’t we talk about, you know, some of those examples that you found most innovative? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. So where do I begin? I think some of my favorites, cause I feel like I’m, I’ve spent so much time with these over the summer.

I feel like they’re my little children. So it’s really hard to, it’s really hard to pick favorites. 

Todd Montgomery: But did you name them? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah, I can name these ones in a, in a, in a polite way. Um, so circular. Circular economies. I’ve been finding really interested. Uh, I’ve been finding really interesting. And I think one of the reasons is that I have a two and a half year old and since having a child, I’m just very aware of how much garbage that’s created and how much packaging and disposable things.

And I feel like I’ve got landfills coming in on both sides. So that’s a bit of a first. I was personally interested in these stories to see how other people are dealing with just garbage issues, especially in places where that infrastructure might not be there, like islands. So I really like stories from Aruba.

There’s an organization called Plastic Beach Party, and they take recycling from tourist beaches and basically put it through a Fancy machine doesn’t look to be crazy expensive, attainable to small organizations, um, and make souvenirs with it for visitors. And so they can do that to help, you know, raise awareness about recycling and some of the waste issues that happen to islands.

Park City in Utah has a really interesting program, or is home to a really interesting program, where an organization has started to do it. Stepped in where the city wasn’t able to, um, to be able to make it easier for people in and residents to recycle. And so they have a whole facility that has a shop, so you take all the stuff you don’t want that would otherwise go to landfill.

Some of it ends up in almost a thrift shop type situation. If you have moving boxes, you can go buy just a big stack of, of old moving boxes that have already been reused. Um, they even have a program where once a year they sell old. skis and snowboards that have, that people have been getting rid of. And some of those even go to underprivileged children who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to ski or snowboard.

So even though it’s a waste thing, it’s also, you know, kind of an equality story too. And then fabric and kind of textile waste is interesting. And I know when we go and travel, we’re probably buying a lot of clothes beforehand. Cause like, Oh, what am I going to wear to a tropical place when I haven’t been to one in a while, I’m going to be really hot.

Um, so just in, I thought that this was interesting for not just how we prepare for travel, but also what we buy when we’re in destination, but Chile, which is also where that big clothing land, textile landfill that you can see from space is they have a program in Santiago where an organization takes recycled clothes and has a way to kind of reduce them down into other textiles, but without using water.

And then they sell those textiles that’s made with a recycled fabric to other entrepreneurs. So it’s a way where you can, anybody around the world can buy that as well for their clothes. So. Those were a few of my circular economy favorites. I also really like the ones where you can kind of remove intimidation around climate topics and take a little bit of the the aggression around away from it.

And so one of my favorite examples from this was the Off Grid Festival which is in Victoria, Australia. And that one is a festival or gathering that’s all about living off grid and making sustainable living choices, but instead of having it in kind of a stuffy convention center where you kind of really have to be, you know, one to want to nerd out at this, they’ve put it in a festival atmosphere.

So there’s music acts. There are food trucks that are powered with off grid power sources, um, and it just seems to be a very accessible and fun way to just, like, lower the temperature and actually educate people on making choices in their own, um, homes and communities on, you know, and bring all these organizations together.

So I liked that that was a different take on it. There’s other examples like Sustainable Solano and Fairfield, California. They also do a lot to educate residents about food forest gardens, which are ways that you can basically, in your yard, turn your yard into a food producing area that is drought resistant and houses plenty of biodiversity.

So, it’s kind of, changing the way people, you know, look at their yards. They do display gardens and people open up their backyards and stuff to show people how they can take those same changes home. I know that you mentioned I could just go on forever. So you’re going to have to stop me.

Um, I know that we were talking about kind of the all rounders that make the environment and economy and everything all work together. And my favorite for that was County Durham in England. And they have an area there where coal mining shut down. The area was environmentally damaged because of the coal mining waste product, and additionally, the community didn’t really have jobs back then.

Because, well, I mean, certain people did, but the industry shut down. So there was definitely an unemployment problem. So what they did is they turned the area that used to be the waste heap into a shopping center. And they took all of the, as they dug out for the parking lot and all the buildings, they made that into a park next door with all of these hills and different ecosystems.

And that would help the biodiversity recover in the area. And then the shopping center that they built had a lot of environmental standards in mind and really championed sustainability and education. Um, they have a lot of pollinator gardens around there and stuff like that. So that one was a good one where they’re using tourism, kind of bringing people into the area, giving people jobs who might not have had opportunities now that the coal area had shut down, and then also using that as a way to rehabilitate the environment too.

I got a happy one. If you let me have one more, you got it. You got it. Okay. So one of my favorites that just always makes me smile is Visit Shipshewana is, um, they’re in Indiana and it’s a, it’s a town really, uh, where with a very high Amish population. and visitors go there to embrace that way of life.

They go to, you know, shop, go to restaurants with Amish food, things like that. But there’s obviously an interest in making sure that that Amish community is protected and that their values are respected and that the people coming in are, are aware of that and know how to respect that community. Um, but at the same time, you want to make sure that the Amish feel supported by you as well.

So they have a whole bunch of great tactics, but the one that really stands out to me is knowing that Amish people don’t use a lot of technology or internet or computers. They actually print their email newsletter and set and give it to the Amish community so that they know what events are going on and how they can still feel a part of that community.

And I thought that that was just a kind of a nice. You know, we’re always talking about like, well, we don’t need printed brochures all the time. Let’s go to email. And then, so that’s kind of gone full circle there. So I thought that that was a nice one, just being inclusive with every, all the community members and, and being sensitive to their needs so that everybody can, can still benefit from the same stuff.

Visitors and residents alike. 

Todd Montgomery: That’s awesome. Those are so good. Well, I mean, you’ve touched on a lot of those and I just, just big picture ad. There’s several, um. from Pacific Islands. And I, what I just, and I, before joining OSU 12 years ago, I lived, I spent about 15 years in Asia Pacific, and my wife is from the Marshall Islands.

And one of the things, uh, that you touched on that, and then, of course, in the list, was touched on, on several occasions, whether it was the Cook Islands or Vanuatu or, or Bali, Indonesia, was the trash that you’re talking about. The, the concepts that then were able to turn that in to some type of economic or community engagement piece.

You know, you talk about the trinkets, the garbage that were turned into trinkets that were then able to be sold. I mean, those are just so fascinating. And an island, right, you just don’t Put your trash on a boat, right? It’s there. And it’s just, it’s a little bit more real to life on your, you just, there’s just no place to put that kind of stuff.

And so I just love those that you focused and I loved when it either got community buy in as a result, Or it provided an economic stream, which then would lead to community buy in to, to travel. And I, I know destination thinking and where a lot of the travel is going, you know, nobody’s saying tourism is all good, right?

But there is, but we can be, you know, a huge economic driver for communities and, and bring communities out of poverty that, you know, You know that really no other industry can do sometimes and I just loved The damage that sometimes tourism calls can then actually reverse that and and become kind of a positive So anyways, I appreciated uh very much reading those and and just the long list and a lot of those places I’ve been to and and just have such fond memories of and and want to be able to have future generations of my family be able to visit at some point, right?

And not, not be a destination to climb because they’re, you know, they’re swimming in garbage or whatever the case may be. 

Todd Montgomery: So yeah, very, very cool. Well, I know a lot of people are probably asking themselves, so I’m thinking about this myself, but you know, what are, what are the challenges? What are the opportunities associated with just the list in general, but also researching and supporting groups that want to do this kind of work?

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. So I would say a big challenge that I discovered is just, I mean, I guess it can be a challenge or an opportunity depending on who you’re working with, but how trapped we probably are in our own echo chambers to be able to find these. And I think language is a big one where there’s probably so much out there that Even if I’m, you know, Googling 24 hours a day for the rest of my life, I’m not going to find if they’re not in the language I’m Googling in.

So I think that even though we have access, supposedly easy access to a lot of these through the internet, one of the big challenges is language to be able to really uncover what some of these solutions are happening in other countries. There’s also alongside that just so many things probably happening in the world that no one’s thought to put on the internet for other people to find.

And so I think that’s where, when you go out and travel on your own, opening your eyes and looking for those really plays a role. And that’s how anybody can really start to, to kind of help bridge some of those challenges. I know Mikkel, who opened this section, this session had, um, has a lot of thoughts about that and using travel as a way to share ideas.

Um, but we are, you know, we’re limited to the stories that somebody else is writing. That’s coming through that’s coming through to us. Um, and why, by looking at this while we travel, we can find these, um, these solutions. So a couple of the examples from the list I selfishly put on because well, they’re really good examples too, I find, but, um, we’re encountered through travel and I would not have encountered them in any of the research that we did if it wasn’t for just kind of being in the right place at the right time.

One of those is the Genki balls in the Ala Wai canal in Hawaii. And that’s basically. Those are micro balls that tourists can get involved with creating or throwing in. And, um, they eat the toxic muck at the bottom, which is releasing gasses and has some really cool results. Like monk seals are in the Ala Wai Canal now, and they’ve spotted hammerhead sharks.

And then on Historic Environment Scotland does a lot of interesting citizen science work for tracking the effects that climate is having on their, um, heritage sites. So they have, they manage hundreds throughout Scotland. There’s no way they could do that on their own. Um, so they really need visitors to help kind of monitor those sites and, um, and assess the changes there.

So, yeah, those two, those are just two examples of, of ones that I just happened upon. You know, I’m sure anybody in any destination anywhere can, um, Open their eyes to it and find some other ones too. And hopefully not, maybe they could put it on the internet. Somebody else can find it. 

Todd Montgomery: So let’s say I met you pretty much as a part of this project.

Well, let’s say that I would have talked to you in, in let’s call it January, January of this year, before you really began this research and really digging into this, you know, you’re probably extremely well traveled. And now. You’ve been through this, you’ve lived and breathed it. And now let’s just say you’re about to go on another travel experience.

How do you view travel or how do you, how do you think you would view the travel at a particular destiny? It doesn’t matter where the destination is. Yeah. How has this changed you? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: I guess, I guess I’m very, uh, I mean, overwhelmed is the word that we’ve, uh, come up with a few times, but I guess there’s all of these.

I, I do feel like my eyes have been opened to a lot of the different There’s certain things that I always thought I was aware of, but the details of them, I’m definitely more aware of now. Um, I think that I probably am a little more worried where I’m like, okay, how do I travel with a two year old? Look at all these snacks I need to bring.

Like how, I don’t know if there’s any way to get away from the route. Yeah. So it could definitely shift, like everything from, um, the decisions you make when you pack. all the way through how you spend your time. I think a big one is that I, um, and this is, this has been a little while in the making, but just quick trips kind of stress me out on a plane, I kind of feel I got to make that count. I get a little worried when she goes to Switzerland or something like that. She has made me raise my eye accepted ways that we do. It’s changed kind of the way I’m looking at even just water bottles or, you know, somewhere where water’s not safe to drink from the tap and you kind of need a water bottle.

Todd Montgomery: How do you, how do you mitigate that? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: So yeah, it’s, uh, it’s definitely, I mean, haunting is a negative word, but it’s definitely shading any, um, any decisions. Do you have any advice there? How is, how have situations like this affected you? 

Todd Montgomery: No, I’m in the same boat. I have, I mean, I, I appreciate your honesty. I mean, I for me, it really kind of comes down to that, you know, that, that leave no trace that the impact you’re making and having worked in the industry and seeing people every week in a new group of people coming in, right. And, and them having similar experiences and maybe similar ways to, and, and I just, I think it’s just realizing like, you’re just part of this, this, this funnel that’s repeating a lot of the things.

And in some ways, some positive, But also some, some negative. And it really makes me think, you know, the educate, the education piece is always huge, but at the same time, you’re traveling with a two and a half year old. I’m traveling with three kids, you know, the urgency of the day or of the moment. You know, sometimes makes you make decisions maybe a little bit differently than you would like to.

Um, and how do you, how do you strike that balance? And then just my own research. I spent a lot of time lately around, you know, communities and what they think and, and where they see the costs and the benefits of tourism and just reading that every day, you just realize the impact, uh, once again. Positive and negative.

And as a DMO or another group, I always think, how does that get bridged? You know, how do we, how do we bridge that gap? I don’t know if we’re going to ever minimize or remove those costs, but certainly there’s ways to minimize. And just as a traveler, a lot of times I’m a bit at a loss too, right? I just, just not really sure, you know, the waste is a little bit easier, but that, that community piece that, you know, being a good steward, being a good visitor, training, like, I mean, that’s just a, yeah, it sticks with me.

And I just, I’m sort of meek when I go on a vacation, just kind of quiet. Like I don’t want to disturb anything that’s going on. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Yeah. Or even knowing, you know, which areas. you want to leave to the locals and which ones those are. And it’s really hard to, to determine that on social media. I know sometimes I see things pop up about Oahu in certain places in Oahu that are, would rather not have tourists and respect and respecting that.

Yeah. So just kind of making the decision of, is it, should I, should I stick with the crowd? Is that the better thing to do? Or should I go to another place where. I’m making an impact, but I’m also supporting them, them economically. So it’s a bit of a, a bit of a conundrum, but yeah.

Todd Montgomery: And I’ll add one more. Do I travel during peak season or do I travel during off season?

Just like you just said, so that. Maybe the community can get a little bit of a break. We, I worked with some Alaskan communities and cruise ships, right? So they, it’s all or nothing, right? When a cruise ship comes in, the town is jamming and it’s completely full. But when it leaves, it goes back to this quaint little fishing village after that.

You know, is it better to just all get it at once and then just have this break? Or is it better to be kind of spread evenly at a low level? I, you know, there’s just so many questions. And I, I, I don’t know. And I’m going to hold you to it, Sarah. I expect the answers to those questions in the next hundred.

Sara Raymond de Booy: We might need more than a hundred for that. But at least we’re making a start on it and giving people something to think about. Because I don’t know how many people are thinking about it that way. So if we can inspire somebody to just make small, changes every time a few more every time they travel, then hopefully there can be some sort of impact in a cultural shift.

I know, I know that we’re probably running long on time and stuff, but, um, for that topic, I think Greenland will be an interesting one to pay attention to. So they have an interesting campaign right now that is all about locals and getting involved with locals and using it as a way to combat AI misinformation that people were using AI to plan trips to Greenland, and the language wasn’t even on.

Google Translate until relatively recently, so the AI results are just all over the place. And so they’ve jumped in to kind of have them as an antidote to this, of the local, local connections. And that way, it also, at worst case scenario, helps travelers not get into dangerous situations because, you know, the robot on their phone told them to go somewhere where weather conditions change and everything.

And then best case scenario, They’re having really meaningful cultural enrichment and not just going to take pictures of beautiful scenery, but getting involved with the community and acting like, like more of a guest and host relationship than what some places might have challenges with. 

Todd Montgomery: So let’s just quickly go back to the research side.

What are some of the examples that were most common and what are some that weren’t as common? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Most common, and probably predictably from a tourism space, is biodiversity. So, I think there’s a lot of reasons behind that. Uh, they, but, and the simplest way to describe it is that, with biodiversity stories, a lot of them are places that visitors can easily go to.

They’re the most obviously tangible tourism experiences, um, in our list. And a lot of times there is an animal associated with them that really pulls at the heartstrings. So you, you know, if you see a seal or a sea lion or a koala or a, you know, a parrot, you got that mascot almost for that, um, for that program.

So definitely biodiversity was where we saw on a lot. Some interesting ones with job, with, um, job creation too, um, I think, especially in, um, more developing communities of how tourism plays into that, whether it’s with conservation and environmental rehabilitation, or whether it’s with, um, organizations that have been set up in remote areas to try to get the travelers from the city out to experience more of the culture.

Todd Montgomery: And then, um, what would be sort of some under, uh, uncommon ones or even, um, Maybe underrated innovations that you’ve seen out there. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: I think what I would like to dig into more, I’m not saying that they’re uncommon out there, but they didn’t come up as much in this. They came up a little bit. It’s built environment and changes that people can make to just buildings and things that already exist to make them more sustainable or better a city. So we do have one example in there, um, that comes to mind right now, um, from Colombia, where they were able to cool the temperatures within the city of Medellin. And so, um, I know there’s a lot of, really neat things that I’d like to look into that are happening in Spain, um, about that.

And I’m sure that they’re happening all over the world, but just with the constraints of being human, we weren’t able to, uh, to dig into those as much as, um, as I guess I, I realize I’m interested in now. 

Todd Montgomery: Well, and I, what I loved about that one and, and several of these other ones is there was a tangible metric to say, Hey, we’ve invested in this and now You know, it feels a little bit better in the community or the temperature has gone down a little bit because of what the green that we’ve added.

So, so much of this does require a little bit of an upfront investment and it’s just awesome when you can see that return on investment or, or whatever the goal is. Sometimes maybe it’s not a monetary, just that there is a goal in mind and that we can measure that success. We talked about a lot today, had touched on a lot of different areas.

Are there any kind of macro trends or, or maybe even better? If we were to talk to each other next year about this time. You know, what do you think will have changed? What do you think? What kind of trends do you see happening over the next year? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: I see a lot of what we already see is a lot of DMOs trying to be leaders in the space where, um, responsible tourism is concerned and kind of educating travelers on, on how to respect a destination.

We do see a lot of that and I anticipate that to keep going. I’m not sure if based on your, I’d be curious what. Your take on this from Sustainable Tourism Lab and seeing all these solutions of, of what trends kind of stuck out for you and the solutions that you reviewed and gave feedback on and, you know, at the university.

Todd Montgomery: Yeah, and it’s just to be transparent. There has been a lot of talk. There’s been a lot of research about sustainability. And really this is, you know, economics, sustainable economics is what we’re kind of talking about here in the broadest sense that, that helps all those, those areas. And just like you said, DMOs, It’s, it’s the taking action piece that I just, I loved about these 100 and these other ones that you’ve been referring to.

I just don’t think the community is going to let community policymakers, whether they’re DMOs or not, just the leaders within the community talk about, here’s what we’re going to do. They’re going to expect action. I see this a lot because we started to see a lot of anti tourism sentiment that’s out there and they’re expecting change.

They’re wanting change in some cases they’re demanding it. Right. And so I think we’re going to see a little, a lot, little to a lot, depending on the destination, depending on where they are in their life cycle and all that, those things, but, I think we’re going to see a lot of, of that. We’re going to see a lot of the community trying to rebalance tourism and, and tourism leaders really starting to understand the costs and how they start to mitigate those costs and play an active role while it kind of accentuating the benefits.

And, and the last piece, uh, and this is the last thing, uh, a middle aged white guy, uh, should be talking about is just the, the indigenous tourism. And, you know, my wife said, this is. Pacific Islander and just learned a lot from her and her family, and there’s not a lot of tourism there, but there is, there is some, and there, there has been some, you know, they have a unique tide of the land that, uh, somebody that’s not Indigenous, I don’t think will ever understand.

And often their land is being used as part of that, that, that tourism development. And so how do we find that right balance and how do we get them involved? Because often just from a purely economic standpoint, they have an incredible, their culture is a lot of the reason people came in the first place, uh, in the history that they, that, that they’ve, uh, brought in and shown.

So I think that’s going to be a trend. Um, and although it’s not. Really around biodiversity and these, but it is fit within, uh, the UN’s definition of that culture preservation. And I, I’m just excited to see where that goes. And I don’t think it’s going to be a ton right now, but I think over the next two or three years, you know, there’s going to be a rebalancing and.

And I just can’t wait to see when, you know, these forces are put together, what kind of innovations come out. Cause I just love when people are incentivized to think outside the box, just cool ideas that just would never have come out of, you know, without that experience and their expertise. So. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: And I think with that, there’s, I, we do have a innovation from Tofino that’s related to that, but I believe Gisele might be speaking at a different point in time.

Gisele, who represents, um, Tribal Parks Allies, and we actually did a podcast with her earlier in the year, and she has a lot of really interesting, um, education for us on just how Indigenous languages are so related to how you take care of the land and if the language goes away, your understanding of the land changes and why those languages are so important.

So Tofino with Tribal Parks Allies, I think definitely underlines that. And then there’s even Palm Springs, which I’m originally from California, um, and I think that there’s a lot more going on down there now about, um, Native American groups and their connection to the land. So Palm Springs, the solution that we have is, um, hosted by the Living Desert and scientists related to that attraction, um, but educates Indigenous youth about how the land was used traditionally, um, within their culture so that they can become better stewards of it and pass that traditional ecological knowledge down.

So definitely a good one to bring up . Yeah. No, no, I, 

Todd Montgomery: no, I didn’t know about that. I’d love, I’d love to, love to hear that podcast. That would be great. Yeah. Well, I, I’m sure Sarah, we could go on for, for much longer if we had the time. Sarah, where can people, uh, learn more and see, uh, this project? 

Sara Raymond de Booy: To read more of these stories and to check out the list of all the 100 travel innovations, um, go to innovate.destinationthink.com and you will see a beautiful mosaic, um, of examples from around the world, um, of a bunch of DMOs and destinations collaborating together to, to really help to bring this forward. 

Todd Montgomery: Great. Well, I can’t wait to see what happens next year with this and as this continues to grow and we learn more, but until then, thanks again for watching and we wish you a happy World Tourism Day. Thanks a lot. 

Sara Raymond de Booy: Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.

David Archer: This has been Travel Beyond presented by Destination Think, and you just heard Sarah Raymond de Booy speaking with Professor Todd Montgomery of the Oregon State University Sustainable Tourism Lab. For more resources and show notes, visit the blog at DestinationThink. com. This episode was produced and has theme music composed by me, David Archer, Lindsay Payne, Jamie Sterling, and Cory Price, provided production support.

If you like what you hear, please take a moment to give us a 5 star rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It only takes a moment and it helps more people find us. We would like to thank the nearly 100 destinations that came together to support 24 hours of travel, innovation, and 100 travel innovations.

We’ll be back next time with some more inspiring solutions and innovations to share. Talk to you then.