Grass roots tourism: How community engagement fuels tourism development

The United Nations sustainable development goals (SDG) were designed to address a wide range of global challenges including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace, and justice. 

Under SDG 17, which simply reads “partnerships for the goals,” UN Tourism notes: 

Due to its cross-sectoral nature, tourism has the ability to strengthen private/public partnerships and engage multiple stakeholders — international, national, regional and local — to work together to achieve the SDGs and other common goals. Public policy and innovative financing are at the core for achieving the 2030 Agenda. 

Both of my guests for this week’s Future of Tourism episode have worked extensively in developing nations internationally and domestically. As destinations work on engagement, alignment, and relevance, we can learn a lot about fostering, building, maintaining, and channeling engagement from their years of work in the field. 

Greg Takehara is the CEO of the innovative, humanistic, global tourism development, and enabling organization that you and I know as Tourism Cares.  

Chris Seek is the CEO of the global tourism consultancy Solimar International, which seeks to create and empower local tourism expertise through education and training. 

The imperative of SDG 17 has always been baked into their work — even before it existed. You can’t do sustainable grass roots tourism development without extensive community and civic engagement. 

Let’s dig in.