What Regeneration Asks of Hospitality
O’Shannon Burns argues that regeneration in hospitality is not a new label for sustainability or a framework to “roll out,” but an emergent, place-based practice grounded in relationships between people, land, culture, and more-than-human life. Drawing on global regenerative futures research, the article outlines four key orientations and challenges hospitality leaders to move from aspirational impact language toward honest accountability and...
Across hospitality and tourism, the language of regeneration is spreading quickly. Hotels, destinations, and travel brands are exploring what it might mean to move beyond sustainability—seeking ways to restore ecosystems, deepen community benefit, and create travel experiences that give back more than they take.
Academic research, including work by Loretta Bellato and Anna Pollock, has cautioned against reducing regenerative tourism to a framework, certification, or performance model, instead emphasizing it as an emergent, place-based process grounded in living systems. In parallel, practitioner communities are experimenting with how regenerative thinking might be integrated into tourism models in context rather than standardized.
The Hotel Yearbook 2026 - Sustainability Edition
The HYB 2026 The Regenerative Question: What Hospitality Must Become tackles regenerative hospitality's fundamental tensions. Moving beyond sustainability buzzwords, contributors will explore three perspectives: purists advocating holistic living-systems approaches; realists demanding measurable frameworks for accountability and scalability; and strategists seeking pragmatic balance between transformation and implementation. This edition serves as a critical forum to interrogate the divides, identify synergies, and define actionable pathways forward. By convening industry experts, researchers, and entrepreneurs, we transform contested concepts into constructive dialogue and, ultimately, clarifying what regenerative hospitality authentically is and isn't.