Regenerative Tourism: Change in Practice (part 2)

Building on Place-based Projects 

One of the underlying perspectives within regenerative tourism is that every place is different. Regeneration cannot be designed in isolation from the geological and ecological conditions, cultural heritage, social relationships, and future possibilities that shape each destination. This creates a central challenge: while interest in regenerative tourism is growing, many destinations remain uncertain about how to translate regenerative thinking into everyday development practice. 

RegenT was established to support this transition from concepts to practice. By bringing together the experiences of seven Interreg Baltic Sea Region projects, the initiative seeks to understand how tourism can contribute to the renewal and long-term vitality of places and tourism systems across the region. Together, the partner projects provide a rich picture of how regenerative thinking can be expressed in different circumstances. Building on these experiences and seeking to sustain and expand their contributions, RegenT is developing a Regenerative Tourism Hub that connects knowledge, training, practical tools, and peer-learning opportunities for tourism stakeholders across the region. 

The partner projects demonstrate how regeneration begins with strengthening relationships between people and the places they inhabit. For example, BEACH-SOS worked with coastal communities to encourage long-term thinking and shared responsibility for local futures. Through participatory processes, residents, municipalities, and other stakeholders explored collective responses to environmental change and opportunities to foster stewardship of coastal environments. 

Other projects approached regeneration through local livelihoods and cultural identity. BASCIL supported rural food producers in developing tourism activities linked to regional culinary traditions, helping to strengthen local economies, while reinforcing the distinctive character of place. Meanwhile, Light in the Dark demonstrated how tourism can evolve by rethinking what constitutes a local asset. Rather than viewing darkness and winter conditions as obstacles, the project explored how these features could become the foundation for unique visitor experiences rooted in regional identity. 

Accessibility and inclusion have emerged as another important theme in regenerative tourism. Through co-design processes and accessibility improvements, Access Routes highlighted the value of involving people with diverse needs in shaping tourism environments and experiences. In doing so, the project broadened participation and helped destinations recognise perspectives that are often overlooked. 

Projects such as RETOUR and 3ST further illustrate how tourism can contribute to wider social-ecological transformation. RETOUR focused on developing and testing place-based tourism experiences in collaboration with local actors. By exploring opportunities rooted in the natural and cultural character of destinations, the project showed how tourism can respond to the distinct needs and aspirations of individual places, while creating value for both visitors and local communities. Complementing this approach, 3ST examined how destinations can build the collaborative capacity needed to address wider sustainability challenges. Through pilot projects aimed at reducing energy and water consumption and minimising waste, the project demonstrated how tourism stakeholders can work together to improve resource efficiency and develop practical responses to shared social-ecological challenges. 

Consolidating Regional Insights for Regenerative Tourism 

The synthesis of the partner projects points towards a common direction for destinations seeking to advance regenerative tourism. Perhaps the most important insight is that tourism development needs to be viewed through a broader lens that prioritises the needs of a place. Rather than focusing primarily on attracting visitors, destinations can adopt a stewardship perspective that considers how tourism contributes to the long-term wellbeing of communities, local economies, and ecosystems. 

This shift also changes how success is understood. The partner projects suggest that thriving destinations are built not only through visitor demand but also through strong social cohesion, local value creation, vibrant cultural identities, environmental sustainability, and meaningful community participation. Indeed, meaningful participation emerged as a recurring theme throughout the projects. Communities, businesses, public authorities, researchers, and civil society organisations all possess knowledge that can enrich destination development. When these perspectives are brought together, tourism can become more responsive to local realities and better able to create benefits aligned with local priorities. 

Another lesson concerns the importance of capacity and collaboration. Regenerative change depends on trust, leadership, shared understanding, and the ability of diverse actors to work together toward common goals. Many of the partner projects invested considerable effort in bringing stakeholders together, creating spaces for dialogue, and building the relationships needed for collective action. Investments in co-creation may be less visible than physical infrastructure or new tourism products, but they often provide the foundation for care, commitment, and lasting change. 

The projects also highlight the importance of experimentation. Whether developing new tourism experiences, promoting off-season activities, improving accessibility, supporting local food systems, or responding to climate-related challenges, change often begins through practical initiatives that test new possibilities and generate learning along the way. Such experimentation allows destinations to explore what works in their particular context rather than relying on predefined solutions or one-size-fits-all models. 

Underlying all these lessons is the recognition that regeneration is an ongoing process. It requires destinations to reflect and reinvent themselves as circumstances evolve. In this way, regenerative tourism can help destinations navigate changing environmental, social, and economic conditions, while continuing to create value for both residents and visitors. It also encourages destinations to consider who benefits from tourism and how those benefits can be more widely shared. Sustainability thus comes to mean a place sustaining itself through continuous adaptation, rather than merely minimising harm. In this sense, regeneration is not an end point but a long-term commitment to nurture the conditions that allow places to flourish. 

At the same time, regenerative tourism should not be treated as a readymade solution. Turning broad regenerative ambitions such as community wellbeing, ecological vitality and local value creation into practice can be difficult, and positive change is not always easy to measure or attribute to tourism. Different priorities may also come into tension. An important part of regenerative practice is therefore not only experimenting with new approaches, but critically reflecting on who benefits, what changes, what trade-offs emerge, and whether tourism is genuinely contributing to the long-term needs of a place. 

Individual initiatives may improve accessibility, reduce resource use or strengthen local value creation, while deeper regeneration requires looking at how these actions interact with the wider social, ecological and economic systems of a place. Not every positive improvement in tourism is necessarily regenerative.  This also raises difficult questions about how regenerative change can be recognised and measured, particularly when transformation is gradual, context-dependent and requires continuous adaptation. 

Looking Ahead 

The purpose of RegenT is not to prescribe a single pathway for tourism development, but to support destinations in exploring what regeneration might mean within their own contexts. Through the Regenerative Tourism Hub, stakeholders will gain access to practical resources, case examples, training opportunities, and a growing network of peers engaging with similar questions across the Baltic Sea Region. 

The experiences brought together through RegenT suggest that regenerative change begins with understanding place, cultivating relationships, and creating opportunities for collaboration. Rather than offering a universal model, the project highlights the importance of responding to local circumstances, while learning from the experiences of others. By connecting these efforts across the region, RegenT contributes to a growing movement that views tourism not only as an economic activity, but also as a means of supporting the long-term vitality of local communities and ecosystems. 

Texten har granskats och godkänts av Novias redaktionsråd 23.10.2026.