Meaningful Travel Summit

Tourism Cares with Norway | April 18 - 23, 2023

A Partnership with Innovation Norway and USTOA’s Sustainability is Responsibility (SIR) Event

Our Global Meaningful Travel Summit is a program connecting industry professionals with local changemakers in places around the world. By coming together in destination, we action and actualize the power of travel. Our goal is to learn from one another and infuse more sustainability into our businesses through the experiences and knowledge we’ve gained from immersive exchanges with local communities.

Our Global Meaningful Travel Summit provides:

• Connections to vetted non-profits and social enterprises for new product development

• Education sessions around universal topics in sustainability and meaningful travel

• Networking opportunities with other travel and tourism professionals

• Actionable best practices in destination stewardship

The Tourism Cares with Norway Meaningful Travel Summit brings our collective impact work to the Norwegian Arctic, a fragile environment threatened by climate change. Like so many destinations around the world, tourism in the region is balancing how to profit from its pristine wilderness without ruining it. Norway is also home to roughly 40,000 Sami people who represent the largest and most vibrant Indigenous population in Europe. With a rich ancestral history of ancient sounds, traditional handicrafts, and a long-standing reindeer culture, the Sami are finding ways to co-exist with new technology and a modern way of life across Norway.

Our Objectives

In partnership with Innovation Norway, this Summit immersed participants in ways to progress their sustainability journeys - through multi-sector collaborations showcasing climate action strategies, learnings from the Sami people, and practical tools for sustainable destination management.

Through the lens of Norway’s “Nordic” method, the Summit will examine how more progress can be made on sustainable product development, investments in stakeholder engagement, and adaptation in a changing environment.

Economic, social, and environmental aspects of sustainable tourism development must include the interests of all stakeholders including Indigenous people, local communities, visitors, industry, and government, for all to prosper. Each one of us working in every corner of the world has a critical role to play, and the Norway Meaningful Travel Summit will take the theoretical to the practical.

Our Takeaways

1. Sustainability requires a "Cathedral Thinking" mindset.
Even though we won't see the end result, we know this work is important and though it takes incredible time and energy, we must push through between leaps of progress. The role of a champion is to close the energy/reward gap and to encourage change when the work is the hardest. 

2. This work is complex. 
Some might view sustainable tourism as an oxymoron. The complexity of this work was evidenced in the dilemmas that all companies are facing in making sustainable choices and in balancing the demand for product and doing what's right for people and planet. 

3. Our end goal should be to create a tourism culture of more travelers, fewer tourists. 
Storytelling around the impact we can and should be making is our responsibility and can lead to new perspectives for our clients. Immersive, authentic, community-led, and purpose-driven experiences are the foundation for the tourism culture we should be creating.

What We’re Going to Do:

1. Stop owning things for ourselves and build intentional partnerships. 
This industry has a long history of competition, but now more than ever we need to move to collaboration - because the negative impacts of tourism are a shared problem. We're competing for the dollars, but we must cooperate on a product that is shared to reach our goals. Attendees have a network now, we encourage them to use it and reach out to each other and ask questions, challenge each other.

2. Stand behind our values and be comfortable explaining them. 
Courageous leadership is the key to building sustainability into your work and requires vulnerability. Be comfortable and confident in building not what your customers want now, but what we need for the future. Explain your decisions, and be transparent. 

3. Build sustainability into our core business KPIs. 
Sustainability is not a marketing tool, it is a management tool. Think of it as you would any other business function, and ensure you take a human approach. And remember, measurement is important, but we can't let that get in the way of progress.

USTOA’s Sustainability is Responsibility (SIR) Summit

In 2022, the United States Tour Operators Association’s (USTOA) Sustainability is Responsibility event, held in Bodø, set the important groundwork for WHY travel leaders must create livable and thriving communities in order to deliver high-quality, authentic experiences for visitors - and the foundation to do that within their organizations. The upcoming Tourism Cares with Norway Meaningful Travel Summit builds upon that, diving into the HOW- through mutual collaborations - showcasing climate action best practices, learnings from indigenous people, and detailing inspirational case studies for sustainable destination management.

OUR SPONSORS