Thanks to the talk I had with David Peacock in September, TMI called me back and asked if I could speak at a student webinar entitled “Sustainability in Practice: Tourists, SMEs, Residents, and Destinations Taking Responsibility for Change”. The talk was organized by Joyce Cawthorpe and Dr. Maeve Marmion, TMI Director of CPD and the Head of Department for Marketing, Tourism & Destinations at the University of Chester. Nick Lancaster, a professor at the University of Cumbria & Managing Director of Lancaster & Lancaster Ltd (a hospitality/tourism consultancy), was already confirmed to be one of the two speakers at this event, so it was really flattering that I was invited to be the other speaker.
Nick Lancaster’s presentation focused on the reality of delivering day-to-day sustainable tourism within the Lake District National Park, while I focused on examples I’ve come across at the GDS-Movement.
From my first talk as “the ‘greenest’ green consultant“‘ at the GDSM in September to this one in November, I had done so much with the team and been through the 2021 GDS-Index assessment and award season that I felt like I had so much to share. We were swimming in data and insights from 73 destinations that have submitted information on their sustainability practices, and everywhere I looked there was inspiration to be found. I spoke about how Skelleftea took a page out of Destination Fyn’s book (literally) by dedicating their sustainability guide to them; I shared how Helsinki uses inclusion in their report-turned-website; I even spoke about the Icelandverse TVC that promotes authentic experiences over virtual ones. The accelerated growth I experienced in my early months at the GDS-Movement culminated in so much information to share, and luckily I found out after that there was a good crowd to share it with too; Joyce told me that there were 43 named people on the call but some were university lecturers sharing their screen with students in a classroom so the talk might have reached a minimum of 60 to 70 people directly and several universities have requested the recording – so that’s my little contribution to sustainable tourism for 2021, hah. I hope someone in those numbers found something that resonated with them in the presentation.
Khalisah Stevens 