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MADRID, Spain –As international travel continues to reach new heights, the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) is calling on governments, destination managers, and the private sector to adopt a new approach to tourism growth—one that puts communities at the center and ensures the economic benefits of travel are shared more widely.
In its new policy brief, Destination Stewardship: Creating Value for All, released today, WTTC outlines seven practical principles designed to help destinations manage tourism proactively rather than reactively. The report also identifies immediate measures destinations can implement during the current peak travel season to ease visitor pressures while enhancing both resident wellbeing and the visitor experience.
The publication comes as international tourism continues its strong recovery, with destinations around the world welcoming record visitor numbers. Rather than viewing this growth as a challenge, WTTC argues it represents a significant opportunity—provided destinations plan collaboratively, engage residents, invest in better data, and adopt long-term stewardship strategies that balance economic growth with quality of life.
Travel & Tourism remains one of the world’s largest economic sectors, supporting one in every ten jobs globally, generating around 10% of global GDP, and expected to create one in every three new jobs over the coming decade. In 2025 alone, the sector contributed US$11.6 trillionto the global economy while supporting 366 million jobs worldwide, highlighting its critical role in driving employment, investment, and community development.
WTTC believes the global conversation must now move beyond simply counting visitor arrivals and instead focus on how destinations manage tourism growth to create lasting value for residents, businesses, and visitors alike.
“When destinations are managed well, Travel & Tourism creates jobs, strengthens communities, protects cultural and natural heritage, and delivers lasting prosperity,” said Gloria Guevara, President & CEO of WTTC. “Destination stewardship succeeds when governments, local communities and the private sector work together with a shared vision for long-term success. Our seven principles provide a practical framework that destinations can adapt to their own needs, helping ensure tourism continues to deliver benefits for everyone.”
A New Framework for Destination Stewardship
At the heart of the policy brief are seven guiding principles that WTTC believes should shape tourism policy worldwide:
- Plan together, grow together
- Make resident satisfaction the measure of success
- Plan ahead
- Understand the issue
- More places, more seasons, more value
- Turn tourism into shared prosperity
- Be ready to respond
Central to the framework is a fundamental shift in how destinations define success. Instead of measuring tourism primarily through visitor numbers, WTTC recommends evaluating resident satisfaction, long-term resilience, environmental stewardship, and the overall value tourism creates for local communities.
The Council stresses that tourism affects virtually every aspect of daily life—from housing and transport to infrastructure and public spaces—and therefore requires coordinated planning across government departments, businesses, community organizations, and residents.
Learning from Global Best Practices
The report showcases destinations already applying many of these principles.
Madrid is highlighted for adopting a proactive tourism strategy centered on decentralization, deseasonalization, and strong public-private governance, allowing the Spanish capital to pursue a value-over-volume tourism model before overcrowding became an issue. Hawaii’s tourism strategy was developed through extensive community consultation, while Singapore’s Tourism 2040 roadmap engaged more than 700 stakeholders to align tourism growth with broader urban planning objectives.
Colorado demonstrates how collaborative governance and long-term planning can identify emerging pressures before they become problems, and Bogotá illustrates how investing in tourism data and visitor intelligence enables smarter planning and more equitable distribution of tourism’s economic benefits across an entire city.
Other case studies demonstrate how destinations are successfully managing visitor flows without discouraging travel.
Dubrovnik has eased congestion in its UNESCO-listed Old Town by coordinating cruise ship arrivals, extending port stays, and introducing scheduled coach arrivals, reducing pressure while increasing hotel occupancy and encouraging longer stays. Kyoto uses real-time congestion forecasting and digital navigation tools to guide visitors toward lesser-known attractions, while Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way has transformed previously overlooked rural communities into internationally recognized tourism destinations. New York City’s “Get Local NYC” initiative similarly encourages visitors to explore all five boroughs, spreading tourism’s economic benefits more evenly throughout the city.
WTTC also highlights Barcelona and Spain’s Balearic Islands as examples of transparent reinvestment of tourism revenues into public transport, education, cultural preservation, and community infrastructure, helping residents clearly see how tourism contributes to their quality of life.
The report features additional examples from Copenhagen, Ljubljana, Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Venice, Italy, and other destinations, illustrating that destination stewardship can be adapted to different tourism models, geographies, and governance structures around the world.
Practical Actions for This Summer
Recognizing that many destinations are already in peak travel season, WTTC complements its long-term recommendations with a series of practical actions that can be implemented immediately.
Among them are launching regular resident sentiment surveys to identify concerns early, mapping localized congestion hotspots rather than treating entire cities as overcrowded, promoting lesser-known neighborhoods and attractions, encouraging responsible visitor behavior, communicating tourism’s benefits more effectively to local communities, and establishing coordinated response teams before problems emerge. The report also recommends setting evidence-based triggers for intervention, ensuring destinations respond to real conditions rather than headlines or public perception alone.
Managing Growth, Not Limiting It
Throughout the report, WTTC argues that tourism growth itself is not the problem. Instead, successful destinations are those that anticipate change, engage their communities, use reliable data, diversify visitor experiences across locations and seasons, reinvest tourism revenues transparently, and prepare for future challenges before they arise.
By adopting destination stewardship as a core principle of tourism policy, WTTC believes governments, destinations, and the private sector can ensure that Travel & Tourism continues to drive economic growth while protecting the character of destinations, enhancing residents’ quality of life, and delivering richer experiences for travelers.
As global tourism enters another record summer, WTTC’s message is clear: the future of successful tourism will not be measured by how many visitors arrive, but by how well destinations manage growth so that everyone benefits.
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