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Lab Programs

 


Sustainable tourism development can fulfill economic, social, and aesthetic needs while maintaining cultural integrity and ecological processes. It can provide for today’s hosts and guests while protecting and enhancing the same opportunity for the future. That’s the good news. But sustainable tourism development also involves making hard political choices based on complex social, economic, and environmental trade-offs. It requires education, community planning and decision making.

The Sustainable Tourism Lab, utilizing a group of staff and professional experts with up to 25 years of experience, offers a number of educational and consulting programs and services aimed at assisting communities, regions, government and private sector planners and agencies, and tourism professionals with meeting this challenge. In addition to our standard programs, the Lab can customize services to best meet your needs, budget, or timetables, including full management and implementation to providing support services to staff. Services include:

  • Workshops, forums and conferences (and planning collabs)
  • Speaker's bureau
  • Strategic tourism planning development
  • Tourism marketing, program and activity development

Whether you are seeking to turn your community or region into a tourism destination or need assistance with specific tourism related activities, the Sustainable Tourism Lab has the programs and services to best meet your needs and budget.

Educational Programs

Conferences, Forums and Workshops

Tourism is a very diverse and fragmented industry, consisting of numerous small to medium sized companies, supported by a myriad of municipal, state and non-governmental agencies that play very significant roles in affecting, controlling or directing the industry’s future. Bringing representatives of these organizations together in ways that allows them to effectively interact, listen, and hold back judgment in regard to each other’s points of view is an essential, first step ingredient in getting conversations started, and assuring that the industry can effectively position itself for success.

With training and education an important component of promoting sustainable tourism principles, the Lab offers a number of educational programs, including multi-day conferences, day-long forums and individual workshops.  Programs are targeted to a wide range of government, private agency and tourism professional audiences, and while standard topics are available, all program topics and content can be customized to meet budget and program needs.  As with our other services, the Lab can handle the full management and implementation of programs, or provide staff assistance with planning and implementation.  Topics may include:

  • Introduction to sustainable tourism
  • The future of sustainable tourism for your state
  • Building a sustainable tourism program
  • River users conference
  • Responsible tourism
  • Social marketing
  • Civic tourism - creating and marketing your somewhere
  • Sustaining the geographic character of your state
  • Resilient tourism
  • Green Tourism
  • Voluntourism

Final reports summarizing all workshop and conference activity are made available to all participants and the public.  See sample final report from a recent conference (PDF).

Separating Lab educational programs from others - Lab Planning Collabs

One of the most popular features of the Lab's educational programs, and what separates the Lab's educational program from others, are the Planning Collabs. These intense small group discussions following the workshops allow participants to use information learned earlier to begin developing potential strategic and other plans of action.

Led by acknowledged experts in the use of group collaborative discussions for strategic and other planning, the Lab Planning Collabs have played an important role in helping participants get the most out of lab workshops, forums and other educational programs.  Following the workshops, participants gather in small groups of 8-10 people based on their specialty or main interest to discuss a small number of questions such as "With this sustainable tourism element, what are the visitors requiring from their experience? Think about basic expectations as well as new requests that may become a trend." 

The sessions last about an hour, after which each table summarizes the essence of their conversations during a wrap-up plenary session, that takes approximately 40-45 minutes.  An afternoon session follows, where participants mix up the groupings to that each table consists of a person from one of the morning categories and different questions are posed. 

Feedback indicates that most participants find these discussions to be extremely helpful towards beginning to apply what they have learned. Roundtable discussions are an effective way to intensify face-to-face interaction. Paper tablecloths (large sheets of flip chart paper) allow participants to write, draw, map and cluster their thoughts/ideas. As at a dinner party everyone is expected to participate and take a lead – even side conversations are encouraged. The intent is to take pleasure in ideas, build on them, make them concrete, debate for clarification, and integrate and synthesize them.

See sample final report from a recent conference (PDF)

Speaker's Bureau

As part of our training and education services, the Lab can provide a wide range of speakers, including members of our expert staff and partnership team, as well as industry experts from around the world.

Consulting Programs

Strategic Tourism Planning and Development

A strategy without implementation is a plan gathering dust on a shelf. 

Whether you are developing an initial strategic plan or modifying an existing one, the Lab can develop, manage, and carry out the entire planning process, or provide support services to agency staff.  When it comes to assisting with developing strategic plans, we believe in both building a strategy of goals, and delivering a plan that can be implemented. In addition, we believe in customizing plans and programs based on specific needs and budgets. For this reason, the Lab insists on developing a strategic plan that is actionable.

Plan components include: 1) General background analysis, 2) Infrastructure analysis and recommendations, 3) Visitor attractions and activities, and their improvement, 4) Visitor facilities and services, and their improvement, 5) Recommended extent and forms of tourism, 6) Market analysis and projections, 7) Recommended tourism development policy and structure plan, 8) Economic analysis and recommendations, 9) Environmental considerations and recommendations, 10) Sociocultural considerations and recommendations, 11) Institutional consideration and recommendations, 12) Marketing and promotion recommendations, 13) Plan assessment and evaluation, 14) Crisis management, 15) Plan creation, implementation and monitoring.  More

Support services available to staff include the following:

  • Data collection and analysis
  • Financial analysis
  • Plan writing
  • Sustainable tourism education and training
  • Brand marketing education
  • Tourism marketing education and training
  • Development of presentation materials
  • Workshops and educational forums
  • Event planning
  • Media and public relations
  • Public input collection

Strategic Planning Process | Prior Lab Events

Tourism Marketing, Program and Activity Development

The Sustainable Tourism Lab also provides its support services for other tourism related programs and activities, including:

  • Community or regional brand building

  • Tourism marketing and promotion

  • Development, management and promotion of attractions and tourism events

  • Event development

  • Sustainable tourism training

  • Assisting agencies with developing tourism services and programs

As with its other activities, the Lab is available to manage and carry out entire programs, or assist staff with various aspects of components of the program.
 

 

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