Beyond sustainability: regenerative tourism’s the challenge of a lifetime, featuring Kristin Dunne

Beyond sustainability: regenerative tourism’s the challenge of a lifetime, featuring Kristin Dunne

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welcome to the future of Tourism podcast I'm David peacock stop owning your own contents young leaders are stepping up bring everyone to the table and imagine they're wild anew [Music] we're barely two years into sustainability is a mainstream discussion and already it's not enough there's a general consensus the destination organizations must focus on regenerative tourism tourism that actually leaves a place better than the traveler or visitor found it there have only been a few successful regenerative tourism initiatives around the world but one stands out for me and it's the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand as CEO of Tourism for the Bay of Plenty Kristen Dunn has the lived experience of working closely with her community to build a regenerative strategy and implementation for the better part of half a decade good morning Kristen how are you where are you what's it like Raina David I'm in the beautiful Bay of Plenty which is on the northeast coast of the New Zealand's North Island and it's a beautiful sunny day here today but boy it's been a mixed bag with the weather and um just I think that's making climate change feel very real this year yeah well as we roll into fall which I guess is your spring we're seeing you know some great weather as well but some highly highly variable and dangerous weather so if anybody needs a reminder there it is yeah absolutely we've got an unseasonable snow at the moment and um and then they're forecasting incredible heat for the summer so definitely a mixed bag well and if you follow the almanac and the Canadian science table they're predicting a a quote odd winter here yeah how about that so listen you've been got you've been gone for a few months we haven't talked what have you been doing well we've had a baby so A beautiful baby girl Maeve who's now eight months old and it's just been a real pleasure to spend time with her and my other son Kalyn who's nine and be a full-time mum for a while but back at work now and I'd love to be back speaking with you well totally glad to have you back so much has happened um in in like I guess 24 to 28 months I mean you you really just you left it's sort of part way into this the world has substantially changed I'm so happy to see that in in essence covet actually moved the sustainability uh question forward put it front and center but in the middle of all that um it became apparent from you know all the work and research going on that's not enough it's about regenerative tourism isn't it yeah absolutely and it's wonderful to see the conversation happening so profoundly and so openly globally and I think the world view the Mind shift that needed to happen happened so much faster because of covert and so there's a massive opportunity there but I agree um regenerative adds that those layers to sustainability that are really important to the community um as well as to visitors well and that's where you and I first met is on the community piece you were working with I think Frank Kuipers and really admire this I'm you know I think well ahead of the curve uh you were saying and Frank was saying um you know sorry was was um championing this idea lots of people were talking about which handling the idea that tourism serves residents first or else it shouldn't be I mean if it doesn't enrich the lives of citizens you have to look long and hard at why and the only way you can enrich their lives is if there's Legacy value and that really means regeneration doesn't it yeah 100 and totally converted to that to that thinking and and I've seen it in action now so it's really wonderful to see that it does actually work and Community can be part of Tourism um and also tourism can be a force for good so yeah it's really exciting to know that to deeply know that and to be able to now apply that thinking to other other places well it's interesting too because when you when you uh as when they're plenty gravitated towards sustainable that's very regenerative tourism plan isn't it interesting it was that was the front and center Focus I I call it the shiny thing the Bible the the thing that gets people really excited and in a room now we're seeing a lot of other destinations embracing it it's going to be part of other and different implementations how you get to Regeneration how you build the networks and the Partnerships it's it's it's not always going to be based on a regenerative master plan it looks like it's going to be lared in with other plans which which makes a lot of sense given the structure of this industry um but I want to come back I really want to talk about the lived experience because regenerative tourism sustainable tourism you know it sounds like a truism but it's not to be taken lightly and it's it's a lot of work a lot of highs and a lot of lows can you give us a pretty season Bay of Plenty from from the time you're standing on the horizon thinking what do we do next and right you know you keep it keep it fun and fast but tell us tell us what it was like oh I had no idea what I was getting myself into um I had a date knowing that this was where we needed to go and it felt right it was right for our indigenous people which is obviously incredibly important it was right for our community it was right for our visitors and it was right for us as an organization to switch up our value and purpose so there was this great synthesis that was this like tick tick tick tick you know this is so what year was that what year was that 2018. 2018 you've been the CEO at that point for how long uh two years two years okay and this and you're brought in under a mandate of what would the change be and how would you manage it I take it I was already within the organization and is the head of marketing so I applied for almost successful to get the chief executive role and yes we had a lot of work to do because we were irrelevant basically and we had no strategy we had no story and we just weren't frankly very successful but at the same time that the place around you was remarkable and marvelous wasn't it absolutely yeah and much loved by new zealanders and by by the community the residents so what you what you do next sounds so sensible to me you you harness that love and attention and commitment but reducing it to a sentence doesn't even begin to explain what happens really and how hard it is to literally from the beginning beat the street to build a new network who cares about something new right right and it is absolutely beating the street every community group that you can get to go in front of it took well over 12 months um to go out there and just tell a different story and to have the community go hmm actually that's important to me your organization would have purpose for me and I would be happy to fund it through my rates if that was what you were helping to do which is to love the place protect it for now and for future generations and and make sure that it's protected and not not destroyed into the future was that literally the core of your narrative that you hit the street with yeah wow did some people look at you like you were hippie yeah well because sustainability at that time just you know meant green environmental stuff and of course we've come to appreciate it's much more about social and cultural and environmental as well as economic so yes a lot of people looked at me like I was crazy and possibly still do and I think that's one of one of my key lessons is that when your own mind shifts you kind of think other peoples have shifted as well right and they might be nodding and agreeing with you but they haven't actually gone through that fundamental shift yet so I think the Mind shift is one thing but I totally underestimated all the other chefs that we needed to make as an organization and also how to keep growing that Coalition of of support and help those mind shifts happen in those people too and that was really a continuous dialogue so let me ask you this I got to take a sidebar on this one because it's so important and it's it's been a lived experience for so many people I know recently myself included the shift you talk about that shift when you understand that the single greatest cause we have is regeneration and sustainability and that actually anything we do fits into it so it doesn't matter you know where you work or what you do there's there's things we can do had you had that personal shift before you started developing the program I you know what I hit it on the very last night of our plan that we had written together with destination think at the time I had it that very night and the plan that we had written was very based in sustainability and I were reflecting back on all the community conversations that we'd had and as you said it just wasn't enough the love of our place was too great The Wisdom of our indigenous leaders was too rich to just leave it at that so I went back to the team and I said no we need to push this harder and it did really feel like it was just something that that got me that night and then I I couldn't change it from there okay so so that moment then you have the moment when you you sort of you sort of jump in the deep end as I caught I've sort of had that same feeling in the last 12 months to say the least it's immediately followed by I in my opinion three months of darkness when you when you accepted that this is the most important thing you must do but you looking at it going oh come on my intelligence still tells me it's impossible and you get really dark and then somehow you pop out The Far Side did that happen to you I didn't have the darkness Bill up front because I was just so optimistic and again it just seemed so logical and right to me that how could anyone disagree with it like of course um but I underestimated a many many things and the first one was really taking our team on that same journey and having them have the confidence to back this thing because we were really we were zagging away from the way every other RTO in the country was doing you were so far from mainstream it's it's you know it's totally appropriate that you were dropped in a little island of the South see because you were very far from the mainstream very far and so our whole team needed to get on board with that and that took that took some time for them to have that confidence and then to be really like yeah this is this is what this is where we need to go that must be remarkable today in the sense that you know at the time it was a complete flyer I mean you were one of the first you know I I likened it to the you know the the all Clarity of Copenhagen saying the end of Tourism as we know it like boom what's going on um that team today must look back and realize as everybody moves towards that mainstream wow they were they were almost five years ahead of that curve yeah and Copenhagen we're a wonderful inspiration to us actually and and Flanders um and others who are in that sort of you know real first mover space yeah and I think it's just one of the many Minds that many shifts we had to make so there was the Mind shift shift and then there was the the culture shift within our organization there was a shift in purpose who were we what what did we do now what didn't we do now and there are a lot of conversations you know picking things up and going oh do we still do this I don't know um and come on come on name names what kind of things did you start doing you know how just how we approached everything changed here's my first observation looking at what you accomplished a sizable portion of your budget went to something other than buying media oh 100 in our home media strategy change and I can talk about that too but so we had to get additional funding and I think that's an important point if you're trying to do this with a with an existing budget it's very difficult so we we work so hard to get additional funding and that enabled us to have end conversations so we didn't stop doing the things that people expected us to be doing we might have done them differently but we had this extra layer of stuff that we started to do which was in this future regenerative space it enables that's that's really that's really important to this situation right now where most dmos find themselves is they can't simply abandon what they've been doing but they need to take this on so I think there's there's really some good wisdom here I'll I'll let you keep going but I just want to underline that go on yeah so it's an end not a or conversation and you have to be very bifocal or maybe try focal you know um so keep your eye on today and what's needed by the industry and you know especially at the moment post covert the industry's so struggling and it's very difficult to have conversations with them about the future when they're just trying to keep the lights on and keep going so they need the support of the DMO to ensure sustainable growth again you know economic growth is an important part of this but then you need to be also looking at much further so into this and the extra layers of destination management and also especially if you can have a regenerative lens on it and you know it's wonderful when you're thinking about a place and protecting it for future Generations that gives you such a bigger time span to be thinking of so I think one of the challenges for a team who's going through this change process is to be thinking here and now next 12 months and then match match further out okay how much is much further Excel oh gosh if you um our Maori Elders would tell us 500 years wow yeah and I mean in our our indigenous peers here in Canada tell us Seven Generations front and back for sure at the very least interesting interesting how mystical and ethereal that seemed four years ago and how how incredibly intelligent and thoughtful it seems today right and I really give all credit to um Maori people who I was able to listen to because they they explained to me what protection of place in people was long before I found the term regeneration so I found regeneration almost as a western explanation for this very wise um innate wisdom that I think all indigenous people have so if you can go to Source within your country and you can go and talk to your first people then that you will understand regeneration better than anything you'll ever read can I ask you this um that initial movement towards first people and tourism it's very awkward here in Canada right now we're in the middle of the throes of a Reconciliation that is in name only at this point and I don't mean to cast aspersions on anybody's effort but that's the truth was that immediately receptive was it hard to make you know that connection to begin with how does that work yeah so I was at a conference and one of the politicians actually said that cultural tourism in New Zealand should not be a value-added thing it shouldn't be something that's done on the side it is our tourism proposition and I thought well it was a light bulb moment I was like yeah that is so true why is it on the side and in my place in my place why is it on the side why do we not see these cultural experiences and so we hired a wonderful wonderful person Simon Phillips and he came and he he helped build those relationships he opened the doors for us and he built the relationships and he built trust and it took time it took time for us to become a trusted um I guess organization and then you know hopefully eventually a partner and we got to share what value could tourism add to our ewe to our hapu in the Bay of Plenty how could we can you tell us can you tell us what ewe and hapu is please oh yes sure so basically um tribe and and family far now so um uh ewe is made up of many hapu yeah many family groupings and then hapu is the smaller kind of I guess you know part of that all equally important all equally important yes the the if the Pebbles go away the foundation crumbles right there it is okay so in there knowing that we're in in the midst of a very rapid adoption of um sustainability as a imperative all sorts of activity going on um lots of great people out there doing great work um lots of other work that's not as great in greenwashing but knowing now that it's you know there will be places that take regeneration as their Core theme of their of their destination master plan there will be other places that are far more practical and work it in what do you want to share with people and let's let's put your hat on you've been an international tourism uh destination development consultant in a number under a number of auspices including miles what would you share with um destination organizations right now as they make that transition um everywhere in the world from from Urban and Central places like Australian and and American big cities right through to some of the uh more pristine and and preservable or unpreservable who knows destinations what would you share so probably three key things um one is it has to be authentic and genuine don't do this to be competitive and competitiveness in in tourism is really a nonsense and we should be open source each place has a value and a benefit in a set of values in a community that is Rich and and differentiated from each other so we really don't need to compete if we are if we understand who we are as a place and who our people are and we're genuinely projecting that into the world so that's the first thing you have to have really genuine intent and love for your place in the community and wanting to see that protected for future Generations and then the other two things that I think are quite powerful as the type of leader that you need to be and there's sort of a set of values I guess around that and the leadership that you need to create within your place and following the same things and then all these shifts that you need to make once your mind has shifted there's a lot a lot of others so I can could I think I can define those but I think going into it it's really important for governors you know boards councils the leadership team to understand this is not a shift in name only this is not just something you can write on a page you have to be prepared to fundamentally shift everything about your organization and what you do when you looked at organization pre-plan and post plan just articulate I mean you've already talked about it's a mind shift for what is what is the Mind shift I think that's the shift of going hang on stop everything we're doing here needs to be different what that difference looks like is is hard to predict but now when I when I kind of look back long horseback I saw that we shifted everything so we shifted our Rolling Papers as an organization we shifted our organizational culture we shifted our power it wasn't about us as a DFO you know like we had this conversation the world is turning you know like and we're not making it turn um so shift of power from us as an organization into the community and into the industry um and then I guess it's a shift in organizational structure you know we've got um resources into different places we had different roles we hired new roles you know destination developers researchers um we had um partnership manager we just had an importance on a whole different range of skill sets as well I imagine you're one as well as we did before which was great content but I mean imagine your role as a curator versus a progenitor of of content became really important right 100 and we talked in the last podcast About the Passion groups that we started within the community and the industry and all power to them they've just done an incredible work and they've become this self-fulfilling self-energizing group of people who uh have a real passion for that area of our DNA and they're making it they're regenerating it for the future and it's a wonderful thing wonderful thing to see in action well and I'm loving the development of models you know we talk about the beer plenty all the time but we also talk about lots of other examples around the world that are happening in pockets of great stuff and on that front I'm going to say you know you've been able to scan for a number of years what else do you see going on that you're really enamored with that that you uh can point other people to say hey if you want to read about some great stuff or if you want to think about people who are doing great work what would come to mind yeah it's a good question I'm a loving Slovenia and Flanders Vancouver Island in the whole social Enterprise piece and wanting to get there um I think the Netherlands is doing great work Scotland is doing great work um Glasgow within that um travel Oregon and you know others in that space um there's a really interesting project on in Tasmania called Flinders Island and they've been doing some very deep regenerative work there so there is there's pockets of awesome what's interesting about what's interesting about Tasmania tell me a little more and it's an island off I know it I know what it is no what's what's interesting about the project oh yeah so this is an island off Tasmania so it's an island off an island and um very very you know traditional authentic community and to be able to have a conversation there about what tourism looks like has had the the people running that project literally moved on to the island and they've had to become accepted not just as a consultant but as a as a local so that they can say that they truly understand what it is to live there and to protect it wow a very deep conversations before they're able to get into action and um I think that's I think that's the thing and I know that my good friend Anna Pollock struggles with this sometimes as an industry we try and we try and make a plan you know we try and put it in boxes and we try and put targets against it and regenerative is so much more self-organizing than that and the role of the DMO is to to spark the thinking into into to be the Catalyst to bring people together and and to be the Catalyst for things not to be the controller of it and I think it's a really important point well and then back to the context of practicality you're an early adopter in this field and working in the same age that that um quilt so to speak uh for a number of years as well as we move the main from mainstream into regeneration and um sustainability is a first step even yeah I think you pointed out very well at the beginning of this you didn't as much as you changed everything in five years at Bop at first you also preserved a bunch of infrastructure you had because there were expectations that's the kind of rollout we're going to see in most destinations they have in tax structures and partners and they're going to shift and they're going to turn some of them are going to have the luxury of uh a place that says no no we want net new and I I'm getting to work with a couple of those in Canada right now who are out of the pandemic into new ownership models and starting to talk about net new that's really fun um but the Practical approach Works my underlining point would be you can't build a network of stakeholders fast enough to help you the one thing we don't have is destination organizations as much as we like to pretend we've got great stakeholders it's a really really um uh shallow kind of Engagement for the most part considering what we're talking about here today isn't it yeah it's really it's just so concerning isn't it because tourism is so valuable to a to a place and its people and it can be so much more and I just we just don't invest in it appropriately and then the governance of it as you say generally changes every three years so you've got to have these conversations and you have them over and over and over again and you know some people are going to get it and some people aren't and but without that as you say that Coalition it's very difficult to move forward and really towards the end of my time at the Bay of Plenty that's what I realized is the very plenty was never going to be successful unless this shift happened much more broadly you know we had to become a small fish in a much bigger Pond and and not be out there kind of flip-flopping Along on our own almost and so I've been really pleased that I've been able to work with regional tourism New Zealand on a professional development program and that was all about trying to lift the tide of our of our awesome marketers and managers who work within tourism to have the same mind shift that that we had and therefore we start to see leadership in action rather than just sort of thought leadership well and I'm I'm encouraged and excited that you take that thinking on the road because as I said the Bay of Plenty has um sparked a lot of conversations around the world many many more than you'll ever know you're like a baseball trading card card you know you don't know anybody who's looking at you at any given point in time um and that's a great thing and I'm really encouraged to see all of this starting to move towards um programs and systems because frankly we need that we need that in order for adoption quickly not just because we want to be successful as dmos but back to the sustainability question the other the other sad reality is tick tick tick tick ticks we don't have forever to do this yeah what kind of thing too is that the urgency isn't there and so I think we have a a way of of taking regenerative tourism and making it implementable within it within a DMO or an RTO and it hopefully protects the the great wisdom that regenerative tourism has come from in the the I guess the people who have really truly deeply understood it is a concept but also moves into this practical sense of how do I actually implement this what does this look like in Practical terms and I think for me it's about um Place Making Place sharing Place keeping are all really important aspects of it and having a regenerative lens across those things but then a lot of it's about leadership and the type of leader that you need to be but also you need around you and then understanding up front all this shifts your organization is going to need to go through because it you know it fundamentally changed our marketing as well it changed how we put ourselves out in the world to be much more authentic we were telling much more authentic stories the DMO got out of the way actually and we just let the passion of the the resident took to The Passion of the visitor and where that passion meets that's where the transformation happens um it changed how we Market it so we were trying to find like Passions to match her community to the passion of our visitor and so the channels that we use were entirely different um so yeah I couldn't underestimate just how valuable it would have been to me if I'd understood all those shifts up front like hey guys I've got this idea and it's going to mean we're going to do all of these things it would have freaked everybody out but it actually we did a sort of by osmosis and learning and it would have been helpful to know just how as you said just how extremely difficult that was well um I don't think you'd ever be able to figure out it takes you here but I will say this um talk to you now that you're back and and congrats on the new family member and everything it has informed who you are though I think you said it clearly clearly to me the other day this is what you do for the rest of your life you're not it's not hey am I going to do this for a while you are this is the most important thing to you yeah yeah and I um gosh I don't profess to be an expert in this and I always defer as I said to my indigenous um elders and also to the pioneers of this work the bill reads and the anapolics and the Michelle holidays and the wonderful wonderful thought leadership that they give and I have had the opportunity to learn from so I'm just you know a lady from the Bay of Plenty in New Zealand who one day thought we need to do better by our place than its people and I can't be part of something that might destroy this place in my the community aren't going to come with us on tourism growth if they feel like it's going to be not managed well and it's going to ultimately cause harm so it just made so much logical sense about now it's something I can't unsee bit right tourism can be such an amazing Force for good and can do incredible things so I just want to be part of that and if what I've kind of learned along the way helps then awesome well and I joined your idea and I would I would underline a second part of that and say tourism has such a capacity to do good that it cannot be allowed not to do it in the crisis of regeneration because tourism like manufacturing like education like intelligence like technology like spirituality like anything it's all going to come to bear on this yeah and the you know tourism operates on the very thing that we're needing to protect yeah indeed um it's great it's so great to have you here oh I always love our conversations um David it inspires me to keep going and even though people might look at you like you're a bit strange or you're like what um it always inspires me I don't know anybody looking at you like your stretch I honestly don't I think I think you've inspired a lot of people um closing thoughts as you round it out um from from morning in New Zealand to tonight in Toronto just anything you want to share before we go foreign [Music] the other piece that I haven't touched on is is and and we talked about this a little earlier the the number and the type of stakeholders you need in your Army as you try and move forward is completely different so you need many many more people and many more types of people so building that coalition is just constant and I know from the team at the bay plenty the the amount of time that they're spending on stakeholder engagement is you know quadrupled we've gone beyond having just sort of me and a Partnerships manager trying to do that to it really being a huge part of everyone's roles and that's where you become really excuse me relevant and you can join you're joining the agendas of other important groups within the system and so I would just say that that is a job that's never done and as we talked about because politicians tend to change every few years you know other Governors change every few years you've got to be constantly trying to make sure that you're you are connected on this conversation and that people are willing to to step in and to do this thing and I think that's probably been my biggest lesson as I thought we had more of a coalition than we did at the governance level but also we had a very strong Community Based initiatives and so I'm hoping that there's enough life in those that that will continue to drive the direction forward does that make sure it makes perfect sense going through a version of that in a different destination we're working with which we summed it up last week is okay we always nurture the network this network was nurtured too much in the in the people not the positions are in the positions of another people so yeah I think the hardest challenge we have I totally concur with you on this one is we must build those networks but then we got to constantly nurture them these are not perpetual motion things they need a little bit of assistance to maintain their their to overcome friction as the saying goes yeah definitely totally agree with you thanks for that all right it's great to see you um hopefully we'll see you in person I don't think that'll be till the spring if I've crossed my fingers and hope to fly would like to go mountain biking in New Zealand but we'll see oh please yeah no definitely do that and make sure you come and have dinner with the family when you do we're very close to one of the um beast mountain biking areas in New Zealand Rotorua I know of it well yes and and all the great and all the great writers who came out of there yeah for sure yeah cool all right well listen it's been great thanks thanks um we'll touch base again um and we'll we'll see you hopefully on dry land okay thanks David have a great day

2022-10-29 22:36

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