Conscious Destination Agenda

The Conscious Destinations Agenda serves as a guideline for the knowledge and education partners of CELTH to develop new relevant knowledge and skills for destinations in line with the challenges outlined in Perspective 2030. Focused on gaining insights into five urgent themes, (knowledge) partners are inspired and challenged to invest collaboratively, thereby strengthening the essential knowledge foundation within the hospitality domain.

Reason

In the advisory report “Waardevol Toerisme”, Valuable tourism (2019), the Council for the Living Environment and Infrastructure (Cli) emphasizes that the current attention from policymakers and politicians in the Netherlands does not match the significant economic and societal importance of the hospitality domain. Additionally, the Cli points out the somewhat limited knowledge foundation in that field. In response to this, ETFI supported CELTH to translate the recommendation from the Cli to establish a multi-year knowledge agenda into the Conscious Destinations Agenda.

Problem solution

The integral optimization of destinations is gaining increasing support. CELTH expects this to become increasingly dominant in the coming period, nationally as well as internationally. The focus in the Conscious Destinations Agenda is on the conscious destination. CELTH explicitly opted for the destination level because it is the point where all different sub-sectors and stakeholders converge. Hospitality and value are created for tourists, residents, and businesses at the destination. In a Conscious Destination, parties strive for an outcome that maximizes the positive social, ecological, and economic impacts of the hospitality domain and leads to the highest possible quality of life, experience, and work.

The project team consisted of:

Stefan Hartman and Jasper Heslinga: They played an active role in the writing team of the Conscious Destinations Agenda.
Researchers from Breda University of Applied Sciences, HZ University of Applied Sciences/Knowledge Centre Coastal Tourism.
CELTH staff members.
Communication experts from NRIT Media.

Approach

The researchers from ETFI were responsible for conceptualizing and developing the overarching concept and theme of ‘conscious destinations’. Furthermore, they took responsibility for the substantive themes of ‘smartness’ and ‘organizational capacity’.

CELTH linked an implementation program to the Conscious Destinations Agenda, with an investment budget of 1 million euros. Stefan Hartman served as the lead theme manager for the ‘organizational capacity’ theme. Jasper Heslinga took on the role of theme manager for the ‘smartness’ theme. This task is recently transferred to Bernadett Papp.