For DMOs & Destinations

Design tourism systems that contribute to the long-term health of your community, its cultures, and the living systems that sustain them.

Design tourism systems that contribute to the long-term health of your community.

The Place

The role of a DMO is changing. For decades, the job has been to market a place. Fill hotel rooms. Compete for attention in a crowded field of destinations. Measure success in visitor counts and heads in beds.

That era is closing. Boards are asking for outcomes that touch community wellbeing, not just economic impact reports. State and federal funders are writing stewardship language into grant criteria. And the travelers most willing to spend at premium levels are the ones explicitly looking for destinations that have moved past the marketing posture.

What is emerging is a different professional identity. Destination stewards rather than destination marketers. Leaders who understand their place as a living system rather than a product catalog. Organizations that hold real relationships with the communities they serve, not just the properties that pay dues. The Transformational Travel Council works with DMOs making this shift, whether you are early in the reckoning or ready to redesign the whole operation.

Learn to design for transformation
Learn to design for transformation
Start A Conversation →
Start A Conversation →

Foundational Concepts

Three ideas anchor how TTC approaches destination work. These are not buzzwords — each one changes what you ask, who you involve, and what you measure.

Destination
Stewardship

Destination stewardship is the evolution beyond destination management. Management asks how to handle visitors efficiently. Stewardship asks how tourism contributes to the long-term health of the place, the people who live there, and the natural systems that sustain both. Stewardship is practiced over time, with residents, ecosystems, and cultural heritage as partners rather than constituents.

Community License
to Operate

Every tourism organization operates with some form of permission. Legal permits, zoning, tax authority. But there is another layer of permission that matters more and is harder to see. Community license to operate is the social trust a destination earns from the people who live there. It cannot be purchased, legislated, or marketed. It is built through genuine contributions to community wellbeing, and it is revoked when trust breaks. Most DMOs have every legal authorization to operate. Fewer have the community license that makes their work sustainable.

Essence-Based
Development

Most destination strategy starts with a market question: what can we sell to whom? Essence-based development starts with a different question: who are we, really? It asks a community to name the distinctive expression of life that makes their place unlike any other, and to shape tourism around that essence. Destinations that build from essence stop competing on attractions and access. They start attracting travelers who are specifically seeking what this place is.

How We Support You

  • Destination Stewardship

    A community-led engagement that builds your regenerative tourism strategy from community listening through implementation. Residents are co-creators, not survey respondents. The program delivers a strategic plan, a stewardship framework, and a cohort of community members prepared to continue the work beyond our engagement. This is our deepest work and our highest-impact offering for destinations ready to move from learning to doing.

    Explore Destination Stewardship →

  • TTC Membership

    Ongoing access to a global community of destination leaders doing this work across 40+ countries. Membership includes discounts to the DMO & Destination Stewardship Lab, monthly Coffee + Connect sessions, Spark Talks, 25% off all paid programs, and the B2B Member Marketplace where destinations connect with the consultants, operators, and partners who understand this work. For destination leaders, membership is the room you want to be in between engagements.

    Join The Community →

  • USC Certified Transformative Tourism Program:

    A three-course executive education pathway developed with the University of South Carolina. The Transformation Economy builds the macro case and language. Regenerative Development teaches the principles of designing for net positive impact. Regenerative Tourism applies those principles to the specific realities of destinations. Self-paced with rolling enrollment. Designed for destination leaders, board members, and senior staff who need credentialed learning that informs strategic decisions.

    Explore the USC Programs →

The Business Case

The transformation economy represents a $208 billion opportunity in the United States alone, and a generational shift in what travelers are willing to pay for. Pine and Gilmore's Progression of Economic Value tells us that each stage, commodities, goods, services, experiences, transformations, earns more than the one before it. Destinations still selling themselves as places to visit are competing on commodity pricing. Destinations that steward the conditions for transformation are building something that compounds.

The Economics of a Stewardship Destination

Destinations that shift from promotion to stewardship see measurable change across the metrics that actually matter to a board, a city council, and a community:

Repeat visitation rises.
When visitors feel held by a place rather than sold to, they come back. Regenerative destinations regularly see repeat rates above 80%.

Resident sentiment stabilizes. Communities that co-create their tourism future stop treating visitors as an imposition and start treating them as participants.

Length of stay extends. Stewardship destinations design for depth, not volume. Average stays of 3 to 5 days replace one-day visitation patterns.

Visitor spend per capita grows. Travelers seeking transformation spend 2 to 3 times more per day than conventional tourists, and distribute that spending across small local businesses rather than concentrating it in gateway properties.

Grant and funding leverage strengthens.
Destinations with a credible stewardship strategy, community license to operate, and documented outcomes compete more effectively for state, federal, and philanthropic funding.

Mid-Sized Destination, 500,000 Annual Visitors

SCENARIO

Current State

A mid-size destination attracts 500,000 annual visitors, averaging 2 days per trip with $180 in daily spend. Tourism generates $180M in annual visitor revenue, with approximately 40% retained locally. Residents express mixed sentiments about tourism's impact on the quality of life. Marketing spend is chasing volume and rising every year to hold steady.

The pattern is consistent across TTC's project history: destinations that orient their visitor economy around community wellbeing see higher-value visitors, stronger local business development, longer stays, and dramatically higher repeat visitation. These are not trade-offs. They compound.

For decision-makers: destination stewardship is risk management and market access in one strategy. Communities that feel served by tourism support its growth. Communities that feel extracted from pass restrictive regulations.

With Transformative and Regenerative Design.

The destination converts just 5% of its annual visitors (25,000) to transformative travelers who stay 2 additional days and spend $150 more per day. Community listening produces a stewardship strategy that residents co-create and advocate for. Local experiences multiply, spreading visitor spend across small businesses, Indigenous-led operators, and heritage routes.

Conservative Impact

$7.5 million in new annual visitor revenue from transformative travelers alone. Meaningful reduction in marketing acquisition cost per visitor as organic referrals grow. Measurable improvement in resident sentiment as tourism aligns with community values. Stronger grant and funding position as documented stewardship outcomes build competitive advantage.

These are conservative estimates. They do not include compounding effects of higher return rates, organic referral value, reduced marketing spend, or the strategic value of community license to operate during market disruptions.

Educational Opportunities

Calendar
DMO & Destination Stewardship Lab
Apr 28
Destinations DMOS
DMO & Destination Stewardship Lab
Destinations DMOS

Led By Jillian Dickens

Most destinations still operate in a management paradigm: optimizing visitor numbers, marketing spend, and revenue. Stewardship asks a different question. What does this place need to thrive across generations, and how can tourism serve that vision? This two-hour peer session gathers destination professionals to work with the frameworks that anchor TTC’s Destination Stewardship practice: Community License to Operate, Essence-Based Development, and Appreciative Inquiry.

Participate in This DMO Lab →

Destinations DMOS
Coffee & Connect: Accurate Location
Apr 29
Members Only, Destinations DMOS, Hospitality Properties, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider
Coffee & Connect: Accurate Location
Members Only, Destinations DMOS, Hospitality Properties, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider

Accurate location is TTC’s concept of establishing a truthful starting point before transformation can begin. It requires radical honesty about where you and your organization actually stand, not where you wish you were or where your marketing says you are. What changes in how you design when you start from where you truly are rather than where you aspire to be?

Members Only

Register For This Coffee + Connect →

Members Only, Destinations DMOS, Hospitality Properties, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider
Meet the TTC | Free Session
May 6
Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider, Destinations DMOS, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Hospitality Properties
Meet the TTC | Free Session
Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider, Destinations DMOS, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Hospitality Properties

A free information session introducing the TTC community, our frameworks, and the learning pathways available to professionals at every stage.

Open to anyone curious about transformative experience design and regenerative thinking.

Explore The Transformational Travel Council →

Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider, Destinations DMOS, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Hospitality Properties
Foundations Session | The Three Relationships
May 7
Destinations DMOS, Hospitality Properties, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider
Foundations Session | The Three Relationships
Destinations DMOS, Hospitality Properties, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider

The foundational framework for all TTC programming. Self & Spirit, Others & Bridging, Systems & Stewardship: three lenses for understanding how transformation works at the individual, interpersonal, and systemic level. This session introduces the framework and explores how it applies across sectors and contexts.

Learn About TTC’s Three Relationships →

Destinations DMOS, Hospitality Properties, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider
Camino De Santiago Pilgrimage
May 22
Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider, Destinations DMOS, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Hospitality Properties
Camino De Santiago Pilgrimage
Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider, Destinations DMOS, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Hospitality Properties

Eight days on the Camino de Santiago with TTC’s community. This is a facilitated encounter with yourself, the landscape, and the fellow pilgrims walking beside you. Daily walking with purpose-driven practices designed to help you slow down, reconnect, gain perspective, and take action. Open to travelers and practitioners alike.

The trail becomes the teacher. Each day builds on the last: morning intention-setting, walking with reflective prompts, evening group dialogue and journaling, and one-on-one mentorship conversations with facilitators exploring your own growth edges.

Learn More About the Camino de Santiago Pilgrimage →

Guides Facilitators Wellness Provider, Destinations DMOS, Tour Operators Experience Designers, Hospitality Properties