Sustainable and regenerative tourism

Working with Alberta's Ministry of Tourism and local agricultural societies our educational outreach project explored the impact of recreationist and tourist visits to farms.  During the annual Open Farms weekend, visitors learned through educational programs on local farm land about the joys and challenges of local agriculture production. They tasted products for sale by farmers and local food retailers.  Learn how these experiences affected agritourists' local food purchase decisions 6 months later by reading this slide deck. Our Summary Report provides additional details about Alberta Agritourists, including additional outcomes of their farm visits including increased appreciation of agriculture and rural destination loyalty.

Read our case study of Ice on Whyte, a long established festival in Edmonton that has enhanced the lives of local recreationists, but also attracts visitors to the city. We employed an experience economy lens and festival life-cycle framework to document the festival's successes (and failures) over a decade. Our book chapter documents our analysis, which also uses UN-SDGs to recommend future action.

Our research lab has examined the impact of World Heritage destinations for several years. The WH conservation brand can attract tourists (see this poster as an example), but its impact often fades over time. Alberta has several WH sites -- these are Provincial Historical Sites, Provincial Parks, and National Parks. We examined the impact of the WH brand on driving visitation to these parks (see this article as an example), but also how aware visitors are of this brand -- affecting sustainable tourism development. A similar project was conducted by Dr. Lisa King in Australia, which is documented in this article I co-authored with Lisa.