People Do Care

At Adventure Elevate, a panel and the room reached consensus: tourists or visitors if we're being polite, don't care. I disagree.

My husband works in a bookshop in the heart of Edinburgh. Visitors regularly ask him what he thinks about tourism — the crowds, the Festival, the volume of people. He tells them: it's a great benefit to the city's economy, but the crowds are challenging, especially at Festival time.

This is a telling conversation. There are signs from visitors of self-awareness, empathy and a sense that something is off balance. The conversation is already taking place. People talking to people in the streets, in the bookshops, exchanging ideas and sharing perspectives.

So how do DMOs read between the lines and hear what's actually being said?

We talk a lot about who talks to whom. Now we have a new dynamic - visitors talking to local residents. They do care! It's not the people, it's the model that's the problem.

Clearly, there is a say-do gap. We know travellers have good intentions but acting on them is another thing. The data backs this up. According to Booking.com's 2026 Sustainable Travel Report, 85% of travellers say that more sustainable travel is important or very important to them. And for the first time, more than half (53%) are now conscious of tourism's impact on local communities, as well as the environment. The awareness and intent are there. What isn't there is a system designed for positive change.

Copenhagen and Berlin get it - the CopPay model rewards visitors for responsible and regenerative behaviours. The system changed. So did the behaviour.

Research consistently shows that travellers care and it’s growing every year. We need to read the signals, looking for if the gap is narrowing, that’s where we should be looking.

Legacy businesses and systems benefit from maintaining the status quo. But we are living through mass disruption - AI, geopolitical instability, social and demographic change. If we keep blaming the visitor or each other, we will never make the bold leap necessary.

We need to change the narrative. The majority of visitors are responsible, respectful and genuinely care about the communities and destinations they visit. And we need to ditch the antiquated system for a bold new world driven by people, planet and purpose.

Let's all embrace the art of travel.