Explore the Motivations and Need for Leadership on Sustainability

Through this activity, we want to provide you with all the necessary tools and knowledge to guide a workshop with stakeholders.

Through this activity, we want to provide you with all the necessary tools and knowledge to guide a workshop with stakeholders from your destination to be able to identify the challenges and barriers that can be recognised in a variety of aspects that have an effect on tourism. The second part of the activity will allow you to collectively look into some of the actions that may be implemented to solve the identified challenges. We also want to help you identify everyone who might be involved in the process of leading sustainability. Understand their realities through observational research, map out relationships and understand what's motivating them and whether there is a bigger vision at play.


Through this activity, we want to provide you with all the necessary tools and knowledge to guide a workshop with stakeholders from your destination to be able to identify the challenges and barriers that can be recognised in a variety of aspects that have an effect on tourism. The second part of the activity will allow you to collectively look into some of the actions that may be implemented to solve the identified challenges. We also want to help you identify everyone who might be involved in the process of leading sustainability. Understand their realities through observational research, map out relationships and understand what's motivating them and whether there is a bigger vision at play.


Through this activity, we want to provide you with all the necessary tools and knowledge to guide a workshop with stakeholders from your destination to be able to identify the challenges and barriers that can be recognised in a variety of aspects that have an effect on tourism. The second part of the activity will allow you to collectively look into some of the actions that may be implemented to solve the identified challenges. We also want to help you identify everyone who might be involved in the process of leading sustainability. Understand their realities through observational research, map out relationships and understand what's motivating them and whether there is a bigger vision at play.

By gathering different perspectives from within your destination, you will be able to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the different issues related to sustainability that need addressing and that your team may not have previously been able to identify. 

Before starting the activity, it is important to understand what we mean by sustainable leadership, which is seen as a source of competitive advantage for destinations and organisations for bringing innovation, continuous improvement and long-term success opportunities. The term comprises those behaviours and practices that create lasting value for all stakeholders in the destination at large.

The activity is divided into five different exercises, each of which allows you to gather different types of information until you are able to lead a workshop with different stakeholders to help shape the vision of the sustainable destination.

Are you ready to get started? You can complete this activity by downloading the templates that you will find by clicking on the images below. 👀

Part 1.1: Brainstorm on the Challenges & Barriers
In the first part of the exercise, which should take around 20 minutes, involve the different stakeholders from your destination which you have gathered (businesses, locals, members from your DMO, etc.) and let everyone ideate and add their thoughts to the different sections of the board. 

The idea is to gather different perspectives on the challenges and barriers that affect tourism in the following aspects. In order to better understand the task, we came up with some questions to spark the first ideas.

  1. Global: E.g., How is climate change affecting our destination? 
  2. Local: E.g., Are our activities damaging the destination's biodiversity?
  3. Personal: E.g, How am I, as an individual, affected by the lack of sustainable practices in the destination?
  4. Political: E.g., How are regulations and policies hindering us?
  5. Community: E.g, How is our use of available resources impacting future generations?
  6. Environmental: E.g, Are we managing our water resources appropriately?
  7. Commercial: E.g, Do businesses have the financial resources to become more sustainable?

Part 1.2: Draw conclusions & define concrete outcomes and actions
This part second part of the activity should take approximately 15 minutes, and again, together with all the stakeholders, you should discuss how sustainable development might be lead in the destination. This should be done by defining concrete actions that could be implemented to achieve specific outcomes in regards to the different aspects that the ideation process has looked at.

By looking for solutions together, we'll be able to develop a much more integrated sustainable strategy for the destination and develop actionable and realistic outcomes.

Mural Link


2. Managing Stakeholder Expectations
In order for your DMO to successfully collaborate with the stakeholders who play a role and are impacted by the sustainable transformation of your destination, it's important to understand who these stakeholders are. 

Thus, with this template, we want to help you identify and clarify who is responsible for what and ultimately be able to transform these stakeholders into collaborators and supporters.

Mural Link

3. Stakeholder Mind Mapping
For this part of the activity, we would like you to gather with the team members of your DMO who are also involved in the Sustainability Leadership Programme and work together to fill it in.

The objective of the exercise is to reflect on the challenges identified during Module 1 and how these impact the different stakeholders that you have recognised. By doing this, you will be able to obtain a broad overview of the relationships, as well as explore the challenges that need to be solved to facilitate decision-making and planning.

Mural Link

4. Stakeholder Observation & Awareness
Through this third exercise, we want you to interview different stakeholders within your destination to understand what their "business realities" are by means of eliminating any biases or preconceived ideas of what their realities are. 

By doing this we hope you will be able to gain insights from their realities in a way that will allow your DMO to develop a sustainable strategy that takes into consideration all of these perspectives from different stakeholders with the objective of providing impactful results in leading the destination's transformation. 
The idea is to make notes of each of the interviews and to highlight, through the "Stakeholder Postcards", the key pieces of information gathered during the interviews.

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5. Setting a Vision for a Sustainable Destination
Through this last exercise, we want you to use the template provided to facilitate a workshop with the different stakeholders within your destination to uncover what the vision of the destination as a sustainable agent should look like in order to satisfy everyone's needs and expectations.

To carry out the workshop, we recommend you involve different stakeholders from the destination and gather between 6-15 people including members of your DMO and residents.

Once you have gathered everyone, the idea is to dedicate 15 minutes to each question to ideate answers. Then, spend the last 5 minutes reviewing the different answers and voting on the most representative ones, these should then be moved to the box of that same colour in the middle for quick referrals. 

Once the workshop is over, you will be able to understand and have an overview of what is the vision for the sustainable development of the destination for the different stakeholders. You'll also be able to look back at this template throughout the creation of the destination's sustainability strategy to make sure the identified highlights are included and solved in it.

Mural Link

Template material
Template material

Through this activity, we want to provide you with all the necessary tools and knowledge to guide a workshop with stakeholders from your destination to be able to identify the challenges and barriers that can be recognised in a variety of aspects that have an effect on tourism. The second part of the activity will allow you to collectively look into some of the actions that may be implemented to solve the identified challenges. We also want to help you identify everyone who might be involved in the process of leading sustainability. Understand their realities through observational research, map out relationships and understand what's motivating them and whether there is a bigger vision at play.