At its simplest, regenerative tourism seeks to ensure travel and tourism delivers a net positive benefit to people, places and nature, and that it supports the long-term renewal and flourishing of our social and ecological systems. It is in this context that regenerative tourism is emerging as an ontological shift in the way we understand, approach and act with respect to travel and tourism.

Even if we could overcome these external barriers to change, psychologists, neuroscientists and complex systems researchers are also suggesting that individuals can be change-resistant for reasons they do not even realise or understand ( Kegan and Lahey, 2001 Meadows, 1999 Shiller, 2000). Not only do we have deeply embedded beliefs and values, but also our existing systems reinforce and scale these ideas into a dense system of organisations, routines and practices underpinned by assumptions that are rarely questioned ( West et al., 2015). Friction, tension, resistance and fault lines continuously emerge as new social–economic–environmental relations are made and remade. More respectful and caring relations between humans and nature, captured in the term “regeneration”, are emerging as a core pillar in this next paradigm. Together, these forces are unleashing deep, fractal disruption and increased vulnerability as our current economic–social–ecological relations breakdown and a new paradigm emerge. Separately, these challenges are all wicked problems.

It is a paradigmatic shift driven by a confluence of factors including the current pandemic, climate breakdown, a global decline in biodiversity, ecosystem destruction, concerns over food and water security, the accumulation of wealth, rising inequality, economic restructuring, workforce challenges, geopolitical shifts, access to health and education and challenges to democracy ( Forum for the Future, 2020).

To use a European analogy, this shift will be every bit as dramatic and transformational in size, scope and impact as the shift that took place between the European Dark Ages and the Enlightenment. We are currently undergoing a huge transformational shift in our social-ecological consciousness. What does it take to become a conscious creator of the future of tourism? The full terms of this licence may be seen at Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Legacy dredge 2018