The Transformation Economy

You’ve likely felt the shift toward deeper, more meaningful value in how we work, live, and travel. The Transformation Economy: Guiding Customers to Achieve Their Aspirations by B. Joseph Pine II, the author of The Experience Economy, has just launched, offering a clear, practitioner-focused look at the next economic frontier: designing offerings that help people truly change and grow. Pine explains why experiences alone aren’t enough anymore and highlights how transformative value is becoming essential across industries.

The Transformational Travel Council (TTC) is featured as a key voice helping define this shift, especially in travel and tourism, with insights on co-creating journeys that foster personal and lasting impact. If you’re advancing transformational travel, exploring future-forward business models, or seeking grounded inspiration for your next step, this book is a must-read. Grab a copy and be part of shaping how organizations create real transformation.

State of the Industry Report

You’re sensing the shift. The data confirms it. This report offers a practitioner-level look at where transformational travel stands today, including market sizing, consumer motivations, emerging design practices, and the integration of regenerative thinking across the industry. It draws on research from the Transformation Economy Collaborative, case studies from practitioners doing this work globally, and the foundational frameworks shaping the field.

Whether you’re building the case for this approach within your organization, exploring how other sectors are designing for transformation, or looking for data to ground your next move, this report is a practical starting point.

Think of the Three Relationships as a diagnostic. When an experience feels flat, it's often because only one relationship is being engaged. When an experience feels profound, it's usually because multiple dimensions are active at once — the inner journey and the outer connection reinforcing each other.

Important Tip: These aren't separate tracks. They're interwoven dimensions present at every stage of the work, and they become the organizing principle for everything you design.

The Three Relationships tell you what you're designing for. PATH tells you when. It maps the complete arc of a transformative journey, from before the trip begins to long after the traveler returns home.

The first two stages happen in plain sight - your itinerary, your facilitation, your on-the-ground experience. The last two stages are often invisible to the designer but essential to the traveler. Think and Honor are where the seeds planted during Adventure actually take root. Designing for them requires a different kind of intentionality: touchpoints after the trip ends, prompts for reflection, and invitations to act on what was discovered.

Important Note: Most travel design covers the first two stages well. The last two, Think and Honor, are where most of the industry has opportunity to grow. That's also where TTC's methodology goes deepest.

PATH gives you the structure. But structure alone doesn't create transformation. The people facilitating the journey, your team, need to embody something different too. That's where HEART comes in.

This is where the earlier insight about staff transformation becomes concrete. You can't teach your team to be humble, engaged, awake, resilient, and thankful in a single training session. These qualities emerge from a culture that values inner development — from leadership that models HEART, from rhythms that create space for reflection, and from the permission to grow slowly rather than perform perfectly

Important Tip: HEART isn't a checklist. It's a way of being. This is where the shift from Doing to Being becomes real in your practice. When your team embodies HEART, it models the same for guests. Think of it as the internal culture that makes external transformation possible. You cannot facilitate what you haven't cultivated.

HEART shapes who your team becomes. S.L.O.W. shapes how you structure time. In a culture that rewards speed and density, slowing down is a radical design choice. It's also where most of the meaning-making actually happens.

Speed is the enemy of reflection. When travelers move too fast, they collect experiences without metabolizing them. S.L.O.W. is an antidote: it builds in the pauses where insight actually happens. A journal entry at sunset. A walk taken alone. A conversation that's allowed to wander. These moments don't photograph well, but they're often what travelers remember years later.

Important Tip: S.L.O.W. is particularly powerful as a design principle for itineraries. It helps design professionals resist the temptation to overschedule and instead build in the space where reflection and meaning-making actually happen.

You now have a compass (The Three Relationships), a journey map (PATH), an internal culture (HEART), and a design philosophy (S.L.O.W.). The Experience Development Canvas is where all of these come together into a structured architecture for your work.

USING THE 5Cs

The 5C Criteria work as a diagnostic tool. Take any experience you're designing (or evaluating) and rate it on each dimension. Where is it strong? Where is it weak? Most traditional travel experiences score high on Contrast but low on Continuity. Most volunteer tourism scores high on Contribution but sometimes low on Connection with self. The Cs reveal where your design has room to grow.

Heather is TTC’s COO and Community Manager. She works with professionals across the travel trade, from destination leaders and hospitality teams to tour operators and independent guides, to help them find their starting point. This isn’t a sales call. It’s a wayfinding conversation: where are you in this work, what’s your context, and what makes sense as a next step?

If you’re not sure which program fits, or if you’re exploring what this approach could look like for your organization or destination, Heather is a great person to talk to.

The Education Center is where you’ll find the full catalog of TTC programs, from introductory sessions and virtual walks to our signature 6-week design program and USC-certified courses. Browse by topic, format, or where you are in the journey. Everything is designed to meet you where you are.