CELTH emphasises the importance of looking across borders and cultures

Author: Bert Smit is Senior Advisor Leisure Economy and former lecturer at Breda University of Applied Sciences. 

In 2022 the Centre of Expertise in Leisure, Tourism and Hospitality (CELTH) adopted the Conscious Destinations Agenda as a framework for knowledge development on the social, ecological, and economic impacts of the entire hospitality domain, which by definition includes leisure, tourism, and accommodation services. The agenda is based on insights from academia, policy and practice that illustrate why our industry and policy-makers need to make more ‘conscious’ choices with respect to these impacts, both positive and negative. Bragging about the number of jobs created, about the number of nights visitors stay in a destination or about the benefits of placemaking, comes with the responsibility to also show the other side of the same coin and explain how biodiversity degrades in instagrammable nature; how social cohesion in neighbourhoods erodes when residents are pushed out by investors; and how immaterial cultural heritage evaporates in an increasingly consumerised society where individuals are enticed to prioritise ‘buying experiences’ over the needs of future generations.   

In the Conscious Destinations Agenda, goals and challenges have been formulated based on research and policy documents focusing on regional broad prosperity, tourism development and - inescapably - sustainable development. All these documents emphasise that making conscious choices cannot be done in isolation, it requires multi-stakeholder approaches to develop future-proof solutions. From its start CELTH has always emphasised the importance of collaboration between businesses, residents, governments, and academia based on the vision that leisure is too complex to study from a lab where all variables can be controlled. Solutions for the challenges we face need to be found in and with the real world. For the very same reason it is imperative that we do not limit ourselves to the Netherlands in looking for solutions. The problems we are facing are not unique to our country and do not disappear at the border. 

Leisure activities influence social structures and community dynamics everywhere because they lead to all kinds of interactions as they use shared resources and are built on shared rituals. Leisure activities promote cultural exchange, enhance local identity, and pride, and contribute to social cohesion. Therefore, participation in cultural exchanges such as festivals and visiting cultural heritage in places like Kiev, Crete and Cádiz is seen as pivotal to safeguarding and sharing our cultural values and identity but at the expense of ever-growing CO2 emissions. Anybody going to Mad Cool Festival in Madrid or European Cultural Capital Tortu this summer? 

All these examples show that leisure has an inescapable international and intercultural dimension that cannot and should not be ignored. Studying leisure from an international perspective is crucial due to the multifaceted global impacts illustrated above. This broader view allows for the identification of common challenges and the sharing of best practices across different regions, ultimately contributing to more sustainable and inclusive leisure practices. The Conscious Destinations Agenda tries to bring (some of) these challenges together in five different core themes.

Theme 1: Living Environment
Hospitality is all about determining the rules and norms under which the host community is willing to receive (some) guests. These rules and norms include those that aim to foster cultural and economic resilience and safeguard local biodiversity and ecosystems. Balancing these core elements of the living environment is pivotal to improving quality of life for residents. Many rural communities are eager to receive more guests. Rural depopulation is leading to a lower quality of life due to local schools, sports clubs and bars closing, leading to even more people leaving. A development that can be seen in many places throughout Europe. Some regions try to break this vicious cycle by implementing concepts such as Cittaslow and Albergo Diffuso to have local communities harvest the benefits of receiving guests. Similarly, the consequences of overtourism in places like Giethoorn and Amsterdam are not that different from those in Paris and Lourdes. The cost of living is increasing while sense of belonging and resident-oriented services and retail are disappearing. Internationally, Amsterdam is famous and infamous (depending on your stakeholder view) for the way it is changing local rules to degrow (party) tourism in favour of resident needs. 

Theme 2. Organisational Capacity
The Amsterdam example highlights that improving the liveability of communities sometimes requires new and different ways of looking for solutions. Whereas the living environment theme takes the perspective of residents and local communities, the organisational capacity theme puts a lens on how stakeholder collaboration needs to be organised across different levels of government with residents, entrepreneurs, and NGOs. Collaboratively developing solutions requires both bottom-up and top-down initiatives, all the way from the New European Bauhaus down to volunteer cooperatives maintaining local cultural heritage. Studying and experimenting with new forms of collaboration, co-creation and capacity building should lead to new ways of conscious decision-making and different solutions.

Theme 3. Smartness
As illustrated above, developing a conscious destination requires smart collaborative decision- making. However, that raises the question of what kind of data or information is needed to make these decisions. Are we (still) using the right indicators? As illustrated in the introduction of this article, measuring ‘success’ requires redefining what success means. In some cases, it may very well mean more jobs and more overnight stays, but for some destinations ‘success’ could also mean increased biodiversity or increased resident participation in activities. The smartness theme focuses on developing data solutions and innovative technologies to support decision-making and optimise impacts. Experimenting with how indicators and dashboards lead to decision-making is important, because businesses and governments increasingly take decisions based on (aggregated) data. But if only data on jobs, inhabitants and average income are used as indicators of success, and data on volunteering, happiness, biodiversity and mental health is not used, it is unlikely that any decision will be made that leads to increasing broad prosperity. Conscious decision-making therefore requires conscious data collection and presentation. CELTH recently developed an Impact label for holiday homes with Natuurhuisje.nl (Nature.House) to encourage holiday homeowners to invest in biodiversity.

Theme 4. Human Capital
The hospitality industry in the widest sense of the word offers many different jobs in many different businesses and organisations. According to Eurostat almost 12.5 million people have a job in tourism in the 27 EU countries. This data category includes the accommodation sector. Unfortunately, the EU does not have a separate leisure jobs indicator, although culture (7.7 million) and sports (1.5 million) are recognised as separate industries next to tourism. The human capital theme aims to get a better and more qualitative understanding of what current and future jobs ask of potential employees. Digitalisation and AI require new job skills, our ageing population requires businesses to invest in sustainable employability of their staff while at the same time they struggle to keep young talent in the industry because of the expected hours and average salaries. For the Netherlands this means that an increasing number of jobs is fulfilled by expats from the EU and beyond. 

Theme 5. Leisure Offer
Leisure activities contribute to physical and mental well-being. Different cultures have unique approaches to leisure that can offer new methods for stress relief, physical fitness, and mental health. Understanding these can lead to the adoption of beneficial practices across borders (e.g. the revival of yoga and meditation in western society). At the same time, globalisation is leading to people from many different cultures and ethnicities living together in the same place. Facilitating the leisure needs of a more diverse population requires new ways of using public places and buildings, for instance for events celebrating different cultures and outdoor activities (e.g. Tai-Chi). Understanding how communities and subcommunities make use of these spaces and facilities is essential to make sure they are fit for use. 

As can be inferred from the above, leisure happens in the real world and it is for and with this real world that CELTH aims to develop knowledge, tools and ideas. We need to look across borders and across cultures to learn and share what we know (for instance, in our education) if we are to make any progress towards a more interconnected and empathetic global community. The ‘Envisioning an Equitable Tourism Model’ project is a key example of this approach.

This article was published in Uncover Magazine - Internationalisation. You can read the complete magazine via this link.