What do we mean by 'regenerative tourism', and what does this look like in practice? Chloe King invites us to imagine a better future for Galapagos.
Chloe is a critical social science researcher and conservation practitioner specialising in tourism’s role promoting regenerative development. She is currently in the final year of her PhD at the University of Cambridge.
Tourism in the Galapagos Islands has long been a double-edged sword: it funds conservation and sustains local livelihoods, yet it also places strain on critical infrastructure and delicate ecosystems. Destinations around the world have been introducing new policy approaches to tackle increasing tourism numbers, from new entrance fees in Venice to Airbnb bans in Barcelona. However, it is clear that these solutions will not be sufficient.
A deeper, system-level transformation is needed for tourism to better serve both people and planet. Regenerative tourism has gained traction as a potential driver of this transformation. While traditional sustainable tourism approaches focus on minimising harm, regenerative tourism recognises that tourism is a nested sub-sector of a wider planet and must actively restore and contribute to the flourishing of a place. It’s tourism not just done to or around a place, but with and for its people and landscapes.
Systems change is at the core of this approach. It sees tourism not as isolated, but woven into broader ecological and social fabrics. To be regenerative, tourism must help these systems thrive. It must enhance community wellbeing, nurture cultural vitality and restore the natural world, rather than depleting or commodifying it. Doughnut Economics, a model devised by the economist Kate Raworth, is a good way to visualise a regenerative system. In this perspective, the “safe and just space” for humankind exists between a social foundation (fulfilling fundamental human needs) and an ecological ceiling (acknowledging planetary constraints). For tourism, this includes thinking about how it fits into the “whole system” – staying within ecological limits while ensuring that it contributes to communities in ways that go beyond just jobs and revenue.
As tourist numbers in Galapagos continue to rise, we speak to representatives from island communities in Skye, the Canary Islands, Rapa Nui and the Caribbean about the challenges of ‘overtourism’.
At the age of 18, I embarked on my journey in regenerative tourism, serving as a divemaster in Thailand and Indonesia. I collaborated with organisations that helped shark fishers retrain as local dive guides, watching their eyes light up in wonder with their first underwater breath. Their livelihoods and value systems, once connected to extractive practices, became fundamentally tied to the protection of these ecosystems.
Since then, I have engaged with various island environments – from Indonesia to Timor-Leste, the Maldives, and now Galapagos – aiming to comprehend how tourism
can be more effectively structured to benefit both communities and the natural world. In certain instances, this involved acting as a consultant for USAID-funded projects, assisting in the formation of community-based destination management organisations (DMOs). At other times, it involved engaging in academic research as a Fulbright scholar in Indonesia to explore the effects of various forms of tourism on community and ecological resilience. Recently, I dedicated 18 months to living in Galapagos, where I engaged in participatory research and helped establish the Regenerative Tourism Group (GTR), which brings together tourism stakeholders and local authorities to envision a better future for the Islands.
Throughout these experiences, I have witnessed both the fragility and power of islands and their communities. Islands are closed systems with finite resources and vulnerable ecosystems, yet they also offer ideal testing grounds for bold ideas. Innovations in governance and sustainability can be trialled at small scales while offering insights that ripple far beyond their shores.
Islands are closed systems with finite resources and vulnerable ecosystems, yet they also offer ideal testing grounds for bold ideas.
In Timor-Leste, a young and resource-scarce nation, tourism is an emerging yet vital sector. On Atauro Island, where coral reef biodiversity is among the richest in the world, local stakeholders created ATKOMA, the island’s first community-based DMO. ATKOMA unites tourism providers, community leaders and conservationists to guarantee that tourism bolsters local livelihoods while safeguarding natural resources.
An important advancement is its sustainable funding model: every guesthouse contributes US$2 for each visitor per night. The funds are combined to address common goals, ranging from reef conservation to community enhancement. This framework empowers local communities to influence tourism development and has successfully prevented unsustainable projects that could jeopardise the island’s integrity. Crucially, ATKOMA’s coordinator also helps respond to guest inquiries and promote tours that better distribute tourists around the island, ensuring it is not over-concentrated in the main port town of Beloi.
The Maldives is renowned for its “one island, one resort” concept, where foreign-owned luxury resorts have dominated the tourism market share. Communities have been traditionally excluded from this model, with the Maldives government only legalising locally-owned “guesthouse” tourism in 2009. Since then, community-based tourism has been on the rise, with more than 638 registered guesthouses operating across the country as of 2020, representing 19% of national tourism bed capacity. However, this model brings its own challenges of sustainability, with each island council expected to coordinate its tourism development but not always given the appropriate tools or resources to do so.
With the support of USAID’s Climate Adaptation Project, we created the first Tourism Climate Action Plan for the Maldives and successfully established the Horsburgh Atoll Tourism Alliance (HATA) as a model of locally-led climate adaptation efforts. Similar to ATKOMA, HATA was created through a deep collaboration with community-based tourism providers and island councils to create a public-private governance structure rooted in community visions for tourism. Led by this vision, we supported the collaboratively designed destination management plan, visitor code of conduct, and visitor information and reservation platform.
Uniquely, rather than booking commissions going towards external platforms like Booking.com or Airbnb, HATA’s platform ensures that 10% of every guest booking goes directly towards funding HATA and its conservation initiatives – including beach clean-ups, reef restorations, and general community engagement to ensure tourism functions for and with locals.
Whether you’re planning a cruise, a land-based tour or a diving expedition, it’s important to make sure that you’re booking your Galapagos holiday with a responsible operator.
Galapagos is at a crucial turning point right now. Tourism has seen remarkable growth, especially land-based tourism, which has increased by 260% in the last two decades. UNESCO and local conservationists have raised concerns: without action, tourism could permanently damage the unique ecosystems and communities that characterise the Islands’ remarkable nature.
The establishment of the Regenerative Tourism Group (GTR) is based on this reasoning. The GTR is collaborating with Galapagos Conservation Trust, local authorities and NGOs to revolutionise tourism in the Archipelago. This conversation extends past simply raising prices or setting visitor limits in isolation. The emphasis is on rethinking the entire system: the administration of tourism, the stakeholders involved, and its connection to the environment. A workshop held in 2023, with over 60 participants, represented both the inauguration of this collaboration and a pivotal turning point. Among a multitude of policy- and practice-oriented outcomes that our group continues to drive forward two years later, we were also able to move away from categorising tourists as “good” or “bad” to focusing on deeper systemic issues. How can tourism better restore the environment and benefit local communities? How can community members genuinely shape the course of their future?
Strategies that were proposed in the workshop have been taken forward by the GTR, and our work over the coming months will focus on expanding community participation and involvement in their implementation. These include developing a participatory code of conduct to guide visitor behaviour in line with community values; piloting regenerative tourism projects led by community members to trial initiatives with potential for transformation; and developing an online visitor information platform based on community inputs that will help reframe tourism around learning, stewardship and connection.
Participation is fundamentally a continuous process rather than a singular event. By utilising surveys, workshops and interviews, we are making certain that the tourism vision developing in Galapagos aligns with local aspirations. Significant attention is being directed towards incorporating land-based tourism stakeholders, who have frequently been neglected in previous conversations. Rather than treating this group as the problem to be solved in Galapagos, we hope to bring them into discussions around how the tourism system might be transformed to help people and nature thrive.
For Galapagos, like many other tourism-dependent destinations, it may be tempting to see strict limits or increased fees to promote more “elite” tourism as the answers. However, these solutions have the potential to isolate the local community rather than bring them into the discussions around what tourism in the islands “should” look like in the future. As lessons from Timor-Leste and the Maldives have shown, foregrounding community participation, agency and vision can ensure that policy solutions are more widely accepted and effectively implemented.
260 %
increase in land-based tourism to Galapagos over the last two decades
The choices we make today will shape the future of Galapagos, deciding if it transforms into a regenerative model of ecotourism or succumbs to the fate of other renowned destinations that continuously try to implement surface-level policy solutions that fail to curb the impacts of mounting tourism numbers.
Despite its challenges, Galapagos remains one of the best-managed and best-protected island ecotourism destinations I have had the pleasure of working in, and it can continue to lead the way in innovative tourism management.
However, a “regenerative” model of ecotourism in Galapagos will never be achieved if it is treated as an end-goal. Ultimately, a regenerative transition should be seen as a continuous process of learning, collaboration and adaptation. Our work continues to draw on lessons and inspiration from other island contexts and engage with the participatory transformation of tourism that better serves this iconic Archipelago.
> 329 k
tourists visited Galapagos in 2023 - a record number
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