Tell Better Tourism Stories

Andy Dumaine says being green is not enough:

The sustainable tourism community needs to wake up and smell the fair trade coffee.  After two decades of lofty ideals and breathless pronouncements, sustainable tourism remains a long way from achieving critical mass.  Although the need for sustainability grows ever more urgent, most sustainable tourism experts continue to operate in the background only to be trotted out when greenies pass through the office.

Andy Dumaine

This sad state of affairs is almost entirely self-inflicted.

Sustainability tends to attract highly educated idealists with a propensity for telling dull stories about salt-water swimming pools and low flush toilets.   The first rule of communications is that just because you care doesn’t mean anyone else will.   The reason sustainable tourism remains stunted in infancy is that the community has failed to tell stories that connect with real travelers. Continue reading

Services and Tools

Ways We Can Help

The Destination Stewardship Center is all about providing knowledge for improving the interaction between tourism and care for destinations, with special emphasis on protecting and enhancing the authenticity of your place. We can help your community manage tourism so as   to ensure maximum benefit at minimum cost while sustaining and enhancing local natural, cultural, historic, and scenic heritage.

By means of workshops, webinars, onsite evaluations and presentations, training sessions, and project-development consulting, DSC Director Jonathan Tourtellot and our various associates and partners can provide information on an array of ways to improve destination stewardship in your country, region, or locale, especially the start-up phase of establishing a collaborative approach.

Collaboration How-To – Step by step methods for convening a destination stewardship council, customized for your locale, by DSC Director Jonathan Tourtellot and associates. We can present ways to achieve better care for a destination and management of tourism. (Fees vary; free for deserving cases.)

Measurement – Rapid self-assessment tool for destinations with emphasis on character of place in addition to customary environmental and social sustainability factors.

Action – Information on catalytic projects for advancing the process of building a destination stewardship council and approaches for its long-term viability.

Cartography – A participatory mapping approach pioneered at National Geographic for raising awareness of a destination’s endemic attributes, useful both for tourist information and residential appreciation.

Outreach – Opportunity to place your story in the Destination Stewardship Report (free) read by fellow practitioners around the world. Contact us with a proposal.

Media training – Ways to improve storytelling about your destination, presented by DSC Director Jonathan Tourtellot based on his three decades of editorial experience at National Geographic and additional years elsewhere.

Videography – Behind-the-scenes videos for all audiences about your destination and the process of conserving its natural, scenic, and cultural character.

Consulting – Assistance with destination stewardship in general.

Free information resources on this website:

Archive of all Destination Stewardship Report stories. You are invited to contribute by contacting us.

Stewardship Resource directories. Add your own listing by contacting us.


As a founding member of the Future of Tourism Coalition, we can bring to bear many of our partners’ services and tools as well.